Biodiesel

[Anonymous]

I just read in TRAINS about a company that is going to use a mixture of Soy bean oil and diesel fuel and eventually go to exclusively soy oil for fuel in their locomotives. Anybody know anything about it and how well it works?

[thirdrail1]

Any Diesel prime mover will run reasonably well on any combustible liquid. Some school districts are running school buses on reycled cooking oil. It is said the exhaust smells like french fries! The problem has got to be cost, so far the cost of any fuel derived from crops has not been competitive in price with fossil fuel. If, however, it is in an industrial plant with an excess inventory of soybean oil, it is no doubt cheaper to burn it running a locomotive than dispose of it.