cool tech February 5, 2013 posted by Nigel

BioBot BB20 – turn your waste kitchen oil into car bio diesel with this low cost home desktop device

biobotbb20 BioBot BB20 turn your waste kitchen oil into car bio diesel with this low cost home desktop device

Feeling the oil crunch yet? If not, you soon will, as supplies continue to dwindle. The one good thing about the remorseless rise in oil prices – if there can be a good thing – is the fact that it’s spurring development of alternatives. Most of the attention is currently focused on electrical power, but there are still ways in which we can use waste oil products more efficiently.

This clever BioBot BB20 desktop oil waste processor can take your old kitchen or local restaurant oil waste from frying etc and convert it into serviceable car bio diesel in just a couple of hours. The product has been designed to cope with average home use, so it processes around 20 litres of bio diesel at a time, and because it’s aimed at the home market, the developers have made it as easy to use as possible.

biobotbb20b BioBot BB20 turn your waste kitchen oil into car bio diesel with this low cost home desktop device

Instead of complicated electronics, the device uses simple manual mechanisms wherever possible, which keeps maintenance down to a minimum, and also means there’s less to go wrong. The process involves filling the unit with waste oil, a heating and agitating segment, testing and processing with methoxide and then a drain and wash.

Of course, you’re not going to want to do any of this in your kitchen or even inside your home, but it’s certainly something that looks as though it might fit nicely into your garage. And while we’re sure the smell is not going to endear you to the neighbors, you’ll have the last laugh as you drive around using the fat from last month’s fry ups for your cheap fuel.

The kit comes with everything you’ll need for the process except the additive chemicals, and costs £495, which is very household budget sized for this kind of equipment.

About the Author:

Nigel is the managing editor of the Red Ferret, as well as a freelance columnist for the Sunday Times newspaper in London. Loves tech and fancies himself as a bit of a futurist, but then don't we all?

Nigel – who has written 5161 posts on The Red Ferret Journal.

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John F. Bramfeld

"Feeling the oil crunch yet? If not, you soon will, as supplies continue to dwindle."

There is no oil crunch and supplies are not dwindling.

That was an unnecessary prelude to a device that may be a useful way to supplement the budget.
- http://www.redferret.net Nigel Powell
  
  No of course not. Oil is going to last forever.
John F. Bramfeld

Ok genius, proven reserves are increasing and there is no danger of running out in the forseeable future. Does that help?
- http://www.redferret.net Nigel Powell
  
  Sorry sorry, you're right. Totally (seriously).
  
  What I should have specified more strongly, was the fact that we're clearly running out of 'cheap' oil. Proven reserves via shale etc are definitely available, but the cost of extracting them (not including Deepwater type adventures) is going to drive costs up considerably.
  
  And for those who are interested, I heartily recommend http://www.theoildrum.com .
  - John F. Bramfeld
    
    A very gracious response to my less than gracious original reply. I am not sure how old you are, but I am 62, and for 50 years of that I have been reading how we are almost out of oil. At the same time I have been reading about the efforts of politicians and zealots obtructing the extraction and refining of oil, most recently those of the current resident at the White House. During that time, prices have gone from about $.35 cents a gallon to $3.50, give or take. Bread has done roughly the same thing. Electronics have done better, tuition has done worse.
    
    Whatever problems there are with the price and availability of oil, poltics is at the root. Almost every basic commodity; steel, aluminum, copper, rare earths, are harder to find and mine than they used to be, but their price is not rising relative to inflation, and in some cases, is cheaper. Technology tends to win the price war.
    - http://www.redferret.net Nigel Powell
      
      Heh, I refuse to get angry over discourse, otherwise what's the point? To answer your point, I would agree with you, except that I had a bit of an epiphany over the Deepwater debacle.
      
      I suddenly realised that these guys were risking – and I mean risking – the drilling of an oil well to depths of over a mile, with all the unknown dangers that entailed, which unfortunately played out badly as we now well know.
      
      That is not recklessness, it was desperation, and at that point I realised that they were being forced to take more risks because they had to. The problem is not that we're running out of oil, it's cheap oil that's gone. Never to return. And that is going to cause us more upheaval than we can imagine.
      
      Technology won't win this price war, because it will take too long to correct the problem, we simply can't ramp up technologies fast enough to cover the insufficiencies, even if some 'magic bullet' tech were to arrive tomorrow, we know from long experience that it takes decades for any technologies to become mature enough for mass utilization.
      
      This is not some sort of doomsday opinion, but one based on a few years of general research and observation by many people who are much brighter than I am. For instance I urge you to read this excellent and cogent post called Do The Math, by Professor Tom Murphy, associate professor of physics at UCSD.
      http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/11/peak-…
      
      I'll leave this discussion with a post I made in 2008 commenting on a recent statement by Joroen van de Veer, the then chief executive of Royal Dutch Shell, one of the largest oil companies in the world, when he said quite categorically:
      
      "After 2015, easily accessible supplies of oil and gas probably will no longer keep up with demand.”
      http://www.redferret.net/?p=9959
      
      The statement was quickly removed from their website, but we do indeed now seem to be entering the end-game for cheap oil, with no discernible alternatives on the horizon. As Prof Murphy said back in late 2011, the world uses around 86 million barrels of oil a day (I believe it's currently 84 million bpd – http://chartsbin.com/view/pdd) which means that these high five moments every time another million barrels or even a billion barrels are found/located or prophesied are simply political posturing.
      
      A new discovery of a billion barrels of oil will last the US *alone* just 2 months at current consumption of around 7 billion barrels per year, and as for world consumption at 30 billion barrels per year, we're talking weeks.
      
      So no, we're not running out of the stuff, and yes there are definitely reserves, but very soon the costs for retrieving what's left and the resultant price rises are going to make us have to think seriously about how we live our lives and plan for the future.
      - mark shaw
        
        Very well put.
      - George Holt
        
        here here Mark! and to add to the point, isnt it time the US bailed out of making gas guzz;lers, using up world supplies ?If gas prices in the US were on a par with europe, big engines would be tabo and Us would be getting more taxes to pay of their debt .No big impact on me at 60 ,but next generation, look out!
      - John F. Bramfeld
        
        BP is a great example of politics over substance. While it was an economic disaster for BP, no so much because of technical desperation but because of political punishment and opportunism, it was never the ecological disaster that was predicted from the first minutes of the leak.
        
        It is not desperate to drill from a mile up, it is a technological marvel, just like the Hoover Dam, the Brooklyn Bridge, Apollo and the Space Shuttle. I suppose you could take the position that the Gulf Spill and the Challenger are evidence against technology. I would not. Risk is inherent in any worthwhile enterprise, technological or otherwise. Whenever there is a nuclear leak, oil spill, bridge collapse, food poisoning epidemic or other mishap, Luddites join with opportunists to condemn the whole system. Everything can be better, but the road to risk free life is the road to serfdom.