I'm familiar with the Imbert etc gasifiers, and am not an enthusiast. Same for veggie diesel, though a little more sympathetic if the resource is plentiful and available. I was once roped in (as you say) to a veggie oil CHP scheme to produce power commercially. Well not roped in so much as offered a lot of money (to me) to design a couple megawatt plant for supplying a local yogurt company. My first question before I accepted the job was, where are you going to get the oil and how much will it cost? "Oh don't you worry about that, um Canada, we are working on that part of it, your job is just to come up with a plan, equipment, costs, etc." So I eased on in, with some trepidation, but I did need the money. A year later, when I had all of the plans, all of the costs to build, had worked out hourly demand schedules, maintenance costs, etc for the big final presentation, I asked again, what are the oil sources, and what is the cost per gallon so I can give final figures. "Oh, we're going to have that shortly, can you just leave that part out?" This time I said no. "Please, it's coming. We're finalizing..." No, I need those figures now.
Well of course they didn't have anything. The best they could come up with was inadequate supply at a staggering price. Something that seemed obvious from the start. I was paid all along, no hard feelings towards me, my plans and cost figures were considered very complete, but the two "oil" guys who'd promoted the whole idea got the hairy eyeball at that last meeting. Oddly enough the principal never fired them, and they continue to this day planning useless stuff. It's a wonder to me!
That engineer stuff you're talking about.....that sounds like fun!
