Did you know?

Today, ConocoPhillips and Tyson Foods announced a partnership to make "renewable diesel" fuel from animals fats. In a WSJ article about the partnership, it says:

Tyson produces about 300 million gallons of beef, pork and chicken fat each year … Producing one 42-gallon barrel of renewable diesel requires about one barrel of animal fat. And each barrel requires, on average, two steers, or 16 hogs or 1,300 chickens, Tyson officials say.

So, it takes 1,300 chickens to get one barrel of diesel fuel (via their proprietary process). One barrel is 42 gallons. So that’s 31 chickens to generate one gallon. At around 30 mpg fuel efficiency, that’s one chicken per mile.

So, your “did you know” fact of the day is: you can drive one mile on the fat of a chicken. Therefore, diesel vehicles have a fuel efficiency of 1 mpc (1 mile per chicken). Go ahead and use that at your next cocktail party as an icebreaker. =)