Soybeans that give you gas - 1 August 2006

Argentina is a prime market for making and selling renewable biodiesel fuel thanks to cheap land and labor, as well as bumper crops of soybeans.Biodiesel is a renewable fuel because it's made by refining oil derived from plants like soybeans, palm trees, and rapeseed. Thinner than vegetable oil, biodiesel can power diesel engines without further conversion. That gives it a big advantage over ethanol, which burns in standard gasoline engines only when it's blended with petroleum. Year 2005 Edmundo Defferrari, an industrial engineer, built a prototype of such a plant 145 miles west of Buenos Aires for just $150,000. It already produces 130,000 gallons of biodiesel a year and requires human labor only to load the plant with soybeans and turn it on. Defferrari sells fuel to local farmers for 95 cents a gallon, about two-thirds the cost of regular diesel. It's a virtuous circle: His customers grow the soybean feedstock that he puts into his machinery.