Ask the Green Queen
Sage advice for green living. Ask your question in the comment section of any post.
To the Honorable Green Queen,
My question to you is this… In some burrows [sic] in Montreal (and hopefully elsewhere) there is an idling law that prohibits cars to run longer than 3-5 minutes. With this being said, why is this not universal? Why is this not better made public? Whats more, how, if at all, is this law being enforced? What is actually being done in practice?
Thanks for your excellent quetions Jess. It’s been really interesting looking into the answer and I hope that what I’ve found helps a bit.
First of all, it is really difficult to find exact data about anti-idling law enforcement. It seems that some in some communities these laws are enforced by bylaw officers and not police or parking enforcement. Some communities can’t afford to hire extra bylaw oficers so many idling infractions do go unpunished.
The on the bright side though, more and more communities are recognizing the need for idling control so places as such as Toronto, Vancouver and even Inuvik have introduced measures to reduce unecessary idling. I thought this excerpt from a CBC news article about idling in Inuvik was quite eye opening:
It may be a hard habit to break for residents like Glen Tingmiak, who warms up his Dodge Charger for a total of three hours each day: almost an hour before driving one kilometre to work, then another hour over the lunch hour, then an hour before he goes home.
“It does cost a lot, but I’d just rather, you know, just jump in a nice warm vehicle,” Tingmiak said. “It’s [more] comfortable to drive when it’s warmer than when you’re driving it cold.”
The mayor responded by basically saying; You live in the north, maybe it’s time to learn how to deal with the cold. Is there anything we can say to Glen to get him to change his habits? If there is then there’s hope for everyone.
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Comments(2)
Category : Uncategorized
Tags: anti-idling-campaign, idling-law-enforcement-canada
I just returned from the post office here in Pioneertown which is one of the most photographed postal outlets in the entire USA. When I came out with my mail there was a car idling next to mine and a young couple taking pictures of the post office building and having a look around.
When people make poor environmental choices the Green Queen takes it upon herself to point out such errors in a friendly and helpful manner.
I approached the couple and said “Excuse me, your car is idling.”
To which the young man said “I know, we were just taking a minute..”
Then I felt compelled to inform him that a light duty gasoline vehicle idling in winter emits 6.19 grams of carbon monoxide per minute, as apparently he was not aware of that fact. Then the young man said “I thought I would burn less by idling for a minute” (in fact he had been there closer to 3 minutes) “than by re-starting the car”.
A compelling theory but one that I was quick to dispel for him. The US environmental protection agency (EPA) states that start up emissions are equal to idling a car for one minute but Ford motor company says that it is equal to only 20 seconds of idling. The Canadian office of energy efficiency says it is only 10 senconds. Let’s split the difference and say 30 seconds, and that is when the engine is cold, it is less when you have already been driving it.
Really though, why idle your car when you are not even in it? Do you have money to burn? Do you think climate change is a hoax? I don’t really want to know, but I would like to share with you several ways to cut down on fuel usage and vehicle emissions that anyone can practise.
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Comments(3)
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I would love to know a little more about bio-diesel. Is it really feasible? How much excess grease have we got? How organized do you need to be to make it work?
Thanks, green queen.
xolisag
The first thing you will need to make the change from fossils to vegetables is a car with a Diesel engine. Because the Diesel engine was originally created to burn peanut oil, as exhibited by Rudolf Diesel at the 1900 World’s fair, the Diesel engine can burn any plant based oil. The main difference between Diesel fuel and vegetable oil is the viscosity or thickness of the liquid, vegetable oil is thicker than diesel but can be made thinner by heating it, which will allow it to spray into the compression chamber of the car’s engine. Imagine trying to get Elmer’s glue to spray out of a spray bottle in a fine mist. That’s what will happen if you try to pump cold vegetable oil into your car’s injectors, they will quickly become clogged, and it will stop your car dead.
Popular cars for vegetable oil conversions are 1980’s and 90’s Mercedes, Volkswagen Jettas or Diesel Rabbits and Ford Powerstroke trucks and vans if you need something more heavy duty. If you are a mechanic or you know a good one you can install a Diesel engine in some models of gasoline cars but this can be a very costly proposition. A good Mercedes Diesel (they run for 500,000 miles with proper care) can usually be found for $1000-$5000.
Next you will need to decide if you want a single or dual tank conversion system. I am currently using a dual tank system which means that I can switch between a dedicated vegetable oil tank and a separate Diesel tank. Dual tank systems are preferred by people who live in cold climates as it can be very hard to start a car on vegetable oil, especially in cold weather when the oil can gel in your fuel line. Diesel fuel can also gel in cold weather so there is a lot of debate about whether dual or single tank is better.
You can purchase new vegetable oil for about 75 cents a litre but then you wouldn’t have the fun of traipsing through back alleys looking for dumpsters full of restaurant grease. That said, if you are going to use waste vegetable oil (WVO)you will need a way to filter it before you fill your tank with it. I use two different home fueling systems, both an electric pump and filter combination and a sock filter method whereby the oil is poured through a filter bag into a 55 gallon drum. The most vital step in filtering your fuel is giving it time to settle. The settling allows most of the solids and the water to sink to the bottom. Waste vegetable oil always contains some water, which comes from the food that was fried in it. Cooking allows some of the water to evaporate but the rest must be settled out of it before it can be used in your engine. The optimum time for settling is 2 weeks but in some cases only 48 hours is required. After the oil has settled it will need to be filtered. The electric pump system is what allowed me to filter fuel as I travelled through the US and Canada. It is portable and fairly compact but again, it uses disposable fuel filters which are difficult to recycle and cost about $6 each. The sock filter I use is washable and can be used over and over again.
Vegetable oil is considered carbon neutral as a fuel. That doesn’t mean that It doesn’t produce carbon monoxide when burned, it means that the amount of carbon is equal to the amount that was absorbed during its life as a plant. The total amount of carbon emissions from vegetable oil is about half of what is produced by Diesel fuel, there is no sulfur and about 10 percent of the amount of nitrous oxide.
Contrary to a popular notion, vegetable oil fuel and biodiesel are not the same thing. Biodiesel is made from plant based oil but uses a chemical process called transesterfication to transform it into fuel that can be burned in any Diesel engine without a conversion system. It is often blended with fossil Diesel and designated B5, B20, B99 or B100, with the number indicating the percentage of biofuel that it contains. If you have a Diesel car and you can find biodiesel you can run your car on it anytime, with any combination of fossil Diesel but be careful the first few times you use B99 or B100 as biodiesel acts as a solvent and will clean out your engine’s fuel system and deposit the accumulated crud in your fuel filter. Fuel filters are easy to change, just ask your mechanic to show you how.
Using vegetable oil as fuel opens up new worlds of possibility but it is not for everyone. It can be messy and time consuming and besides that, there just isn’t enough to go around. The US produces 11 billion litres of waste vegetable oil per year which is equal to just ONE percent of the country’s fuel usage and five percent of it’s Diesel consumption. To try to grow corn or canola or soybeans for fuel would be ridiculous, as there is simply not enough land to do so and corn being grown for ethanol in the US has already resulted in riots in Mexico over the rising cost of tortillas. Currently some very smart people are looking into making biofuel from algae, which can be grown without land or potable water.
For more information on vegetable oil car conversions check out www.ecoauto.ca
www.truebiofuels.com
Comments(8)
Category : Uncategorized
Tags: biodiesel, Diesel, Vegetable-oil, WVO
My name is Chantale Doyle. I am an artist and I recently spent eleven months living in a Volkswagen van that is powered by waste vegetable oil (WVO), during which time I visited 24 US states and 3 Canadian provinces. As I travelled I operated a small restaurant out of my van called Frybaby which I used to demonstrate the vegetable oil fuel system. Frybaby serves only the highest quality deep fried food with a menu that alternates between vegetarian samosas served with mint, cucumber and yogurt raita and my own creation, which I call frymales and is like a tamale (with goat cheese, chilis and cilantro) but deep fried.
During the past eleven months I have learned many important lessons about self sustainability, living in a small space and adapting to new surroundings among other things, and now Citizenshift is giving me this opportunity to share what I’ve learned with you. In addition to recounting stories and observations from my travels I’ll be doing my best to answer questions from readers on environmental topics, but feel free to ask me anything, travel and food questions are welcome too.
I am by no means an expert on the environment, I hold no degree in environmental science, but what I do is I ask a lot of questions and I work hard to minimize my impact on the planet’s resources. I’d like to make this blog a forum for all of us to share ideas and concerns about our impact as individuals and communities. No topic is too obscure to be investigated so tell me your concerns and I will do my very best to find answers.
I recently found a more stationary home in the Mojave desert of California where I am trying to answer my own questions about adapting to this harsh and beautiful environment. Limiting my water and resource consumption is a major priority along with making myself a valuable member of a community where people rely on each other in ways that seem to have become extinct in urban areas. I’m starting a free service for my neighbors whereby I will pick up supplies for them from town twice a week so that the community as a whole can be less reliant on fossil fuel burning cars for every single errand.
I’d be very happy to hear about neighborhood initiatives from other communities too. So tell me about your own experiences and neighbors. I’d be thrilled to hear from you!
Comments(3)
Category : Uncategorized
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