US Defense Logistics Agency Makes Single Largest Gov. Purchase of Advanced Drop-In Biofuels Ever

450,000 gallons at $15 a gallon. What part of broke do these people not understand?

I'm sure this is just the beginning of another giant waste of money.

These people never cease to amaze me with their absolute stupidity. How long do they expect to be able to run the US military on used cooking oil?

Will eating french fries become required of citizens in war time?

Stunning

it's the military

the defense budget is a mere suggestion

the cooking oil part probably only costs $4/gal

this puts the algae oil at $25/gal

the cloud point for WVO based biodiesel makes it unsuitable for aircraft

The whole concept is ridiculous.

We have the answer, and it's not biodiesel or cooking oil. 25 years of clean cruising between refuelings sounds pretty good to me.

The amount of fossil fuel burned by the US military is massive. They will never be able to create enough algae oil or cooking oil to make it anything more than a cute, expensive little "feel good" novelty.

http://www.energybulletin.net/node/29925

Nukes, aren't a solution for planes & ground transport

the military has made efforts to have as much equipment as possible run on j8

there are projects to use the nuke in an aircraft carrier to convert various waste streams into j8

The group of ships using the 50/50 biofuel and petroleum blend will be called the Green Strike Group demonstration. From the blog.

Nope, they aren't. They'll be burning it in ships, which use the vast majority of fuel.

Nukes work just fine in those.

It's another dog and pony show, basically.

You have to admit it's pretty funny. The President's new slogan can be:

"Saving The Planet By Burning Cooking Oil In Our War Machines"

Kinda catchy.

YABEHbKTBATG

yet another blog entry hijacked by Kramarat to b*tch about the government

needs work

Not the government......................just really stupid, expensive ideas.

Hey, if I didn't b*tch about the government, we wouldn't have anything to talk about.

I keep looking for opportunities to praise the government. A blog like this would do it:

US Eliminates Aid Money and Defense To Countries That Won't Allow Nuclear Powered Ships Into Port

I"ll keep looking.

Unf*ckingbelieveable! Typical Federal Gov waste of US Taxpayer's hard earned Dollars. $15 per gallon is seriously ludicrous in these times of fiscal woe...

I really wonder which bunch of Congressmen/Congresswomen received mega amounts of French Fried Potato waste oil PAC money to appropriate this hyperbole of waste?????

On one hand I find $15 a gallon sort of surprising since I can buy 100% fresh ASTM B-100 bean oil at usually diesel price +$1.

If it is FOB Honolulu it all makes sense since it can only be delivered by open ocean barge probably from to Gulf of Mexico.

On the other hand as a guy hates paying +$1 for bean oil, I hope the increased production capacity of 50% green fuel in the future will drive that +$1 down to -$1 in the future

If we start running our Navy on it, there won't be any left for you.

wow B100 really?

BioD makes a good additive, since the sulphur was removed

even 2-3% extends the life of the motor quite a bit

1/2 a million gallons is a test for the military, not of bean oil, but of algae oil

Mostly used cooking oil with a small percentage of algae oil.

Secretary Vilsack also underscored, a number of times, the fact that starting to invest in U.S.-created biofuels will create jobs on American soil and could be a huge boom for the economy.

Another tag line coming from yet another puppet of the current administration.

I swear, these expensive and futile government stabs at alternative energy sources that hold no long term promise are becoming Quixotic. I'd say it's laughable, but it's not.

in 07 [last administration] when I was setting up a plant & making biodiesel

there was

a blenders tax credit

a big subsidy for the soybean processors to help them sell the solids

over about 6 months, we saw the price of soybean oil double as ADM bought up all the soy oil & set the price, having a virtual monopoly on the "free market"

unlike ethanol the blenders credit for biodiesel, was only for producers making less than a million gallons a year

back to this project

last I read algae oil cost 100 times as much as corn or soy

the viability of algae oil is dependent on being able to develop a strain that has a high oil content & is able to be grown outside in open ponds. closed systems are probably never going to be cheap enough to operate.

how should research be financed?

Government can finance small scale research in a lab or university setting, with results being shared with the public. If private entities are intrigued enough with the results to warrant the implementation of large scale production, it's up to them to find non-government funding to do it.

The government has no business artificially boosting private companies, (Solyndra), nor manipulating markets with subsidies and targeted tax breaks.

don't we end up back at the same root problem in all the examples of waste you so gleefully post?

we need to fix campaign financing

we will be able to start to apply logic to the systems then

there will always be elements of the good ole boy network in play, we need a counteracting force

which to me is informed opinion/participation

The root problem, is that you change the subject so often that I can't keep up.

How does campaign financing fit in here?

the funding for this happened most likely as a quid pro quo for the biodisel plant, some defense contractor & probably a few others to keep the re-election train rolling

all the K street stuff has campaign finance at the root

money is not free speech

Absolutely. Just about every problem we're having has it's roots in Washington.