It took $25.00 the other day to fill up my gas tank. Now, I don’t know how much my car holds, but it’s a Cavalier. I remember the time it took less than twenty dollars to fill it up. Its time for an alternative fuel source and that fuel source may just be chicken fat.
Chicken fat for a biofuel is not a new concept. Researchers at the University of Georgia started experimenting with poultry fat to heat buildings on campus in 2002. They tested chicken fat, or yellow grease, white grease from pork, and beef tallow in one of the campus boilers. The tests found that fats, particularly yellow grease, have a high heating value with very low emissions.
This year, twenty three school buses in Floyd County GA will all be run on chicken fat. The chicken fat is turned into a biodiesel and then mixed with regular diesel. The Assistant Superintendent says that the school will probably save close to $15,000 this year in fuel costs alone. Also, chicken fat is readily available. As of 2002, the U.S. was producing 11 billion pounds a year of poultry fat.
So, do you think the emissions smell like fried chicken?
eeeYUCK! As a vegetarian, I’m not crazy about anything that involves killing chickens, but for goodness’ sake, the poor cluckers are being killed anyway and who knows where they’re putting all that fat currently. Leave it to the Georgia research schools to make chicken-fat fuel. They’re also the ones that put that awful medicine into pancakes rather than chicken livers. Didn’t I read that here?
(Thanks for thinking of me, Cindy. I’m doing okay-ish, considering.)
I’m all for alternative fuel sources, even chicken fat!
that is a great Idea. I was spending that much on gas every week to a week and a half in my cavalier. I wonder what else people consume loads of that can be converted?
An independent candidate for Texas governor (Kinky Friedman) has made biofuel part of his platform. Are you familiar with his campaign?