The best thing to do with cats

[House of Mustard]

http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_1534821.html

A German inventor says he's found a way to make cheap diesel fuel out of dead cats.

Dr Christian Koch, 55, from Kleinhartmannsdorf, said his method uses old tyres, weeds and animal cadavers.

They are heated up to 300 Celsius to filter out hydrocarbon which is then turned into diesel by a catalytic converter.

He said the resulting "high quality bio-diesel" costs just 15 pence per litre.

Koch said the cadaver of a fully grown cat can produce 2.5 litres of fuel - meaning around 20 cats are needed for a full tank.

He said: "I tank my car with my own diesel mixture and have driven it for 105,000 miles without any problems."

Annelise Krauss of the Dresden Animal Protection Association blasted Koch's new diesel though, saying: "This is as bad as experimenting on animals."

[stacer]

105,000 miles=2,100,000 cats?

Wait, no, less, because he probably gets 20-30 mpg. So--70,000 cats.

[Fellfrosch]

New moneymaking scheme: get kitties that are "Free to good home," raise them to adulthood, and sell them for 37 pence each as diesel fuel. We'll all be millionaires!

[Spriggan]

Right just like you told us we should get kitties that are "Free to good home," raise them to adulthood, and sell them for 48 pence each as baconaid.  And despite my initial investment in free kitties I've yet to make a pence.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

"This is as bad as experimenting on animals."

well, consider me an animal experimenter. I can't think of a better thing to do with a dead animal.

[The Lost One]

The problem I see is the cost of raising full-grown cats, just to turn into gasoline. I'm not trying to advocate anything for cats, but this seems to suffer from the same problem that ethonal does; it's too inefficient to  mass produce.
Think of it like this, it takes a year to raise twenty full-grown cats to make one tank of gas that is burned off in a week. Putting this on an industrial scale would mean that there must be a lot more cats, like over a thousand cats per automoble per year. This in turns means that if every household in America switch over to this new bio-diesel, each household (on average) would need over 2,000 cats. I just don't love (or hate) cats that much.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

Ethanol is actually cheaper than petroleum, from what I understand. It's not cost effective because there's no DEMAND for it. If all the motor cars were converted to use ethanol, and you were producing it on that mass scale, we'd end up saving quite a bit as a county.

Of course, a few gigantic multi-national corporations would go out of business, but what's that in the grand scheme of things?

[The Lost One]

Ethanol isn't cost efficient because there is not enough land, to grow enough corn, to produce enough ethanol, to meet the current demand for gasoline. It is only cheaper right now because of its limited production, but that price would skyrocket if ethonal was produced on a larger scale.

[House of Mustard]

They wouldn't go out of business if they were the ones producing ethanol.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

I'll have to talk to my father-in-law about that. He works for the US Grains Council, and their business is getting people to buy US grown corn and grain. My last convo about this with him left me with a very different impression than you have. (and, since he's been in the business for decades, I kinda think he's an expert on it).

Remember, ethanol isn't made from the corn kernals, but the leftovers.

[Skar]

Ok. I have about a dozen dead cats in my back yard.  Where do I send them for this biodiesel process to be performed?

[42]

Germany, apparently.

I'm sure the Post Office wont complain.

[Entsuropi]

Send em here. We'll feed them to the royal marines.

[scAri]

well, consider me an animal experimenter. I can't think of a better thing to do with a dead animal.

Consider ME an animal experimenter. I make a living off animal experimenting. I was literally raised on this stuff.

[The Jade Knight]

What, on bio-diesel?