| This contest is fueled by the following news: |
| | As gas prices continue to rise in the United States, car owners are turning to their favorite bistros for a gasoline solution. Specifically, they are seeking our recycled vegetable oil. Environmentalists have been using recycled vegetable oil as fuel for years. Now, with the high price of petrol these so called veggie cars are also becoming cost effective in many ways. For example, Etta Kantor drives to a Chinese restaurant in her neighborhood every couple of weeks. At the restaurant, she picks up a few buckets of used vegetable oil that the owner of the bistro has set aside for her use. Once home, Kantor will use a colander to strain the vegetable oil and will further filter it to remove water and food particles. The vegetable oil is then put into a fifteen gallon tank that sits in the trunk of her Jetta -- where a spare tire normally would be kept. By only touching a button, which is placed just above the radio, Kantor can switch from diesel fuel to the vegetable oil instantly. Restaurants have to pay to get rid of old vegetable oil. They are happy to give it away to people like Kantor for free.
Oil crisis and alternative fuel types:
The first century of powered flights demanded growth in the production of liquid fuel from petroleum, and thus, development of aviation symbolizes the petroleum era, in which the extraction and consumption of petroleum witnessed exponential growth. While other major transport kinds (automobile, railway, water) also depend on liquid fuel, aviation depends to a large extent exclusively on fuel as other available energy sources (for example, batteries) are practically inadvisable for flights.
From 2003 to 2008, petroleum prices increased six fold. Unlike the previous crises, such huge increase in oil prices, this time, is not connected with any substantial interruptions in oil supplies or a decrease in world oil reserves but due to the inability of oil exporting countries to increase its extraction in sufficient quantity to satisfy the growing demand from new large consumers of oil — fast-growing economies, such as China and India. Several researchers consider that the oil peak, probably, has already passed or its arrival may be inevitable and the oil prices may continue to increase probably for many years to come and to unprecedented levels.
The increase in oil prices renders a strong impact on civil aviation. Particularly because of its per-passenger high fuel consumption, Concorde possessed marginal competitiveness even when oil was rather cheap. Subsonic jet liners consume less fuel per passenger, but the fuel component represents a substantial fraction of the ticket price and the increase in fuel prices make the passenger flights more expensive. In the meantime, progress in technologies such as video-conferences reduces the cost of virtual alternatives in comparison with a physical presence, which is essential for business. Some experts of oil-extracting industry such as Matthew Simmons urges for the widespread use of such technologies instead of using transport.
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