A Booming Business

It's been said that any new technology brings with it its own hazards, drawbacks and assorted downsides, and the same can usually be said for new business models. Overuse of computers has given us workplace problems like carpal tunnel syndrome and eyestrain, and we can all remember the joys of technological breakthroughs like asbestos, to take the obvious example. There's a case being reported this week in the Arizona Republic that brings up a similar point about the new business of biodiesel, and one of the side effects that we really should have seen coming before now...

With the price of gasoline hovering around $4 nationwide, the idea of getting used cooking oil from the local greasy spoon and filtering it down to motor fuel in your garage has a very strong appeal. Nevermind that most people will spend dozens of hours of work on every gallon of fuel they obtain through this process (effectively making much less than $1 per hour, or perhaps one twentieth of minimum wage for this work; it's still free fuel, it's still good for the environment, it's still a way to avoid foreign oil, and so on. Unfortunately, it's also still motor fuel, used to power an internal combustion engine, and therefore (under the wrong conditions) both flamable and explosive...

Imagine if people all over the country were to start filtering cooking oil in their garage. Explosions of the type described in the article would become commonplace, and you'd definately want to invest in those new fireproof ceramic shingles for your roof, just to keep your house from being set on fire everytime your neighbor's biodiesel operation blows up. Even worse, if the E85 ethanol (flex-fuel) vehicles start to catch on, you might have people all over the country operating distilleries in their basement -- in which case you'll want to purchase armor for the side of your house for those occasions when your neighbor blows himself up, house and all...

Now I suppose if could be argued that this is a good thing in the larger view; it would certainly increase demand for fire-proof ceramic roof tiles, armored siding, bullet-proof window glass, and fire extinguishers. It would also represent a huge growth opportunity for contractors who install these products, and might even result in a new building boom to replace all of the exploding houses and garages. With luck we could even see new products start up to handle these needs, like built-in fire fighting systems for ordinary single-family houses, or carpets and window treatments made out of the anti-spall linings used inside tanks (they keep bits of the inside of the tank from being knocked loose and flying around the interior like shrapnel when the vehicle it hit by a shell or missile, a process called "spalling")...

Preposterous, you say? Then tell me this: how do you propose to stop it? Used cooking oil can't very well be made a controlled substance, and neither can the (very simple) filters needed to convert it to fuel. You can make the whole process illegal, as with stills for making alcohol, but even BATF has never been completely successful in shutting those down, either; I'd hate to put local law enforcement in charge of sniffing out used cooking oil in someone's garage. And in any case, we can't afford the extra police needed to carry out such a search, or the additional errosion of our civil rights that searches of this kind would cause. Unless the price of motor fuel comes down, or some other method of transportation is introduced, and soon, this type of story is going to become more and more common...

Maybe I'll look into investing in the companies that make those ceramic roof tiles...