The pony will run on E-85 if you open up the main jet in the carb. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, converting older cars is not difficult. E-85 eats plastic so go with brass and leather in the carb.

Oil palm is pretty simple to harvest, you use a long curve-bladed knife on a pole to cut the fronds bearing the fruit which then fall to the ground (trees can be up to 60 feet). If you've ever seen a date palm harvested it's essentially the same. Once the fruit is removed from the frond you run through an inexpensive screw-type press which once the oil is extracted leaves a high-protein paste that's an excellent animal feed.

As for virgin oil prices and such I can't be much help other than to suggest checking your local commodities markets. Yield estimates are annual and cost per acre relatively low as palm trees are very low maintenance in Florida. There are few pests or diseases and many are planted simply for ornamental value, although it's one of the most widely planted/harvested palms in the world since it's the source for palm kernel oil which is used in a wide variety of products from foods to cosmetics.

My interest is strictly personal production and use, although many have been twisting my arm to "go into the business". I feel like there are too many hucksters looking to make a buck in alternative fuels and also just don't need additional projects. We're still in planning stages looking for the best supply and pricing for seedlings, as well as getting all the components together for processing. The beauty of biodiesel production is that it's scalable, so it's fairly simple to size-up to whatever you're need is. We're basing our equipment on the "Appleseed" design found at www.biodieselcommunity.org as it's very open-source and a lot of folk are using and modifying it to suit their needs. I like to use as much off-the-shelf stuff as possible to keep maintenance and construction simple, no need to re-design wheels!

Not a big fan of hydrogen though at the moment as it's an "upside down" alternative energy, meaning it takes far more dirty energy to produce and distrubute it than it's capable of offsetting in use. Most real-world numbers show it to be the dirtiest form of energy currently available, but the media wouldn't have you think it so. It has potential, but my personal feeling is that the complexity of systems that utilize hydrogen to generate power will keep it at the fringe compared to simpler and more robust systems such as solar, wind and biofuels.

OldNuc, thanks for the comment on E85! I'm looking at pure ethanol though which doesn't atomize like gasoline, not to mention E85 is still 15% gasoline and I'm trying to move away from petroleum-based fuels altogether. On a political note, and I really don't care much to touch on politics, we're funding the people we're fighting against through our foreign petroleum investments. Could you imagine how WW2 would have gone if we sent money to the Axis powers during the war? Whenever we visit the gas station were not filling up, we're pumping for Al-Qaida. Food for thought!

Pure alcohol has been used in racing for a long time. The info is out there for use in most on road engines. It is difficult to vaporize when abient temps drop into the 50s though. I can frost up the intake on a 4.2 ltr 80 CJ-7 in summer running E-85. Until the alcohol production starts to use something other than corn for feedstock only the farmers will be happy. The dried mash can be used to fuel the still which reduces that production cost also.

You are right about funding the bad guys... We are sitting on an estimated 800 billion bbls of recoverable oil shale right here in the good old USA. Not to mention the other known and proven fields still in the ground. This country could cut imported oil by about 25% tomorrow morning by just running the pumps.

There's a lot of great sources for ethanol, most far better than corn. Thanks to nearby sugar production I can pick up molasses for about $70 a ton which is real easy to process to finished product rather than go through producing a "beer" for distillation. On our property we've got invasive Cogon Grass like you wouldn't believe, and today my Dad asked if it could be used for making ethanol like Switch Grass. Told him all I wanted was for it to go away!