Worth Repeating: "Researchers Convert Chicken Fat to Fuel" (And... it's gone.)

Yahoo! News

Researchers Convert Chicken Fat to Fuel

AP - Tue Nov 29, 8:42 PM ET

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. - Fuel is the thing with feathers. Hoping to find an efficient way to help power automobiles and trucks, researchers at the University of Arkansas say they have developed a way to convert chicken fat to a biodiesel fuel.

"We're trying to expand the petroleum base," said Brian Mattingly, a graduate student in chemical engineering. "Five to 20 percent blending of biodiesel into petroleum-based diesel significantly reduces our dependence on foreign oil."

Mattingly's research allows biodiesel producers to assess different materials to see what works best. Producers will be able to choose the best way to convert different grades of chicken fat into fuels.

R.E. Babcock, a professor of chemical engineering, said chicken-fat fuels are better for the environment and the machines.

"They burn better, create less particulate matter and actually lubricate and clean things like cylinders, pistons and fuel lines," Babcock said.

Traditionally, biodiesel producers have used refined products like soybean oil because they are easier to convert to fuels. However, the refining process makes soybean oil more expensive — and fuel producers must compete with grocers for the oil supply.

Chicken fat can be a less-expensive substitute because it is available at a low cost. However, fatty acids in raw chicken fat can lead to the creation of soap during the various chemical processes.

In his studies, Mattingly used high-quality fat (less than 2 percent fatty acid content) and low-quality, feed-grade fat (6 percent fatty acid content) obtained from Tyson Foods Inc. plants in Clarksville and Scranton. The high-quality fat is more expensive than the feed-grade fat, but both are less expensive than soybean oil.

It took different steps to refine the different fats, but it could be done, Mattingly said.

"The project demonstrated that there is a very fine line between facilitating an adequate reaction and generating so much soap that the biodiesel yield is diminished," Mattingly said. "Basically, deciding which method to use comes down to economics."

Michael Popp, an associate professor of agricultural economics, said it is too early to tell if making biodiesel fuel from chicken fat is economically feasible.

[Ed note: Nice save! The GAS companies were getting worried for a second. Do you really think we have enough chicken-fat laying around? Please. KFC-your-fat-ass later...]


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SOURCE - http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051130/ap_on_sc/chicken_fat_fuel

KFC Cruelty

introduction | investigations | protest photo essay

Introduction

KFC are the target of a global campaign calling for an end to the suffering of the 850 million baby chickens cruelly raised and killed for the company each year. This openrescue.org special report looks at a series of Animal Liberation Victoria (ALV) investigations exposing widespread animal abuse in KFC supplier sheds, and features a photo essay on the regular protests carried out against KFC's cruelty to animals.

Investigations

KFC supplier sheds and slaughterhouses have been the subject of undercover investigations around the world, all exposing routine cruelty. ALV have repeatedly conducted investigations at KFC suppliers and continue to find birds who are bred and drugged to grow so quickly that their legs often collapse under their artificially enhanced weight, crippling them. Many die of starvation and dehydration because their broken legs will not carry them to food and water. They are crammed by the tens of thousands into sheds thick with ammonia fumes and forced to spend their entire lives living in their own waste. The birds routinely suffer broken bones from being grabbed by their legs and violently stuffed or thrown into crates or from being slammed into shackles upside-down at slaughterhouses. Many chickens are still conscious as their throats are slit and when they are dumped into tanks of scalding hot water to remove their feathers. Click here to read about ALV's chicken meat industry investigations.

Protest Photo Essay

For over two years ALV have been conducting weekly demonstrations outside Melbourne City KFC as part of the international KFC Cruelty campaign. ALV protestors have shown video of ALV open rescues of meat chickens at KFC suppliers (which document KFC broiler babies being raised in horrific conditions), given out free 'mock' chicken to show that there are delicious and cruelty-free alternatives to KFC, and have distributed hundreds of thousands of leaflets, posters and postcards to KFC customers and passers by, many of whom have sworn off ever again eating the remains of tortured and crippled baby birds. Click here to see our regularly updated photo essay documenting the ongoing KFC cruelty demonstrations.

SOURCE - http://www.openrescue.org/news/kfc.html


(...)


BONUS: 9/11 - Part 2: Boxcut This!

Yahoo! News

TSA to Allow Scissors, Tools on Planes

By LESLIE MILLER, Associated Press Writer Wed Nov 30,11:22 AM ET

WASHINGTON - Airline passengers will be allowed to carry small scissors and tools onto planes, reversing a rule that led to confiscation of many thousands of sharp objects at airports since the Sept. 11 terror attacks, a Homeland Security Department official said Wednesday.

Transportation Security Administration chief Kip Hawley on Friday will announce changes to the list of items prohibited in carry-on luggage and to the airport screening process, according to the official, who spoke only on condition of anonymity because the plan has yet to be announced.

With federal air marshals on planes, bulletproof cockpit doors, armed pilots and 100 percent screening of checked baggage, the threat of a terrorist taking over an airplane has lessened since the 2001 attacks, the official said. The biggest concern now is explosives.

Though the new list of prohibited items hasn't been finalized, certain sharp objects won't be on it, the official said, including scissors less than 4 inches long and wrenches and screwdrivers less than 7 inches long.

Air Transport Association spokesman David Castelveter said the industry has been briefed on the plan and supports it.

"What we believe, as does the TSA, is that we should be focusing on what poses the greatest risk," Castelveter said.

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SOURCE - http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051130/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/passenger_screening

BBC News

Sunday, 23 September, 2001, 12:30 GMT 13:30 UK

Hijack 'suspects' alive and well

Another of the men named by the FBI as a hijacker in the suicide attacks on Washington and New York has turned up alive and well.

The identities of four of the 19 suspects accused of having carried out the attacks are now in doubt.

Saudi Arabian pilot Waleed Al Shehri was one of five men that the FBI said had deliberately crashed American Airlines flight 11 into the World Trade Centre on 11 September.

His photograph was released, and has since appeared in newspapers and on television around the world.

Now he is protesting his innocence from Casablanca, Morocco.

He told journalists there that he had nothing to do with the attacks on New York and Washington, and had been in Morocco when they happened. He has contacted both the Saudi and American authorities, according to Saudi press reports.

He acknowledges that he attended flight training school at Daytona Beach in the United States, and is indeed the same Waleed Al Shehri to whom the FBI has been referring.

But, he says, he left the United States in September last year, became a pilot with Saudi Arabian airlines and is currently on a further training course in Morocco.

Mistaken identity

Abdulaziz Al Omari, another of the Flight 11 hijack suspects, has also been quoted in Arab news reports.

He says he is an engineer with Saudi Telecoms, and that he lost his passport while studying in Denver.

Another man with exactly the same name surfaced on the pages of the English-language Arab News.

The second Abdulaziz Al Omari is a pilot for Saudi Arabian Airlines, the report says.

Meanwhile, Asharq Al Awsat newspaper, a London-based Arabic daily, says it has interviewed Saeed Alghamdi.

He was listed by the FBI as a hijacker in the United flight that crashed in Pennsylvania.

And there are suggestions that another suspect, Khalid Al Midhar, may also be alive.

FBI Director Robert Mueller acknowledged on Thursday that the identity of several of the suicide hijackers is in doubt.

SOURCE - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/1559151.stm







U.S. President George W. Bush delivers an address on the war in Iraq at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, November 30, 2005. Trying to counter critics of his war strategy, President George W. Bush vowed on Wednesday that U.S. forces will not cut and run from Iraq but said improvements in Iraqi security forces may clear the way for a reduction in U.S. troops. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst