With gas prices going up I am considering harpooning a whale and modifying my car to run on it’s oil. How much oil can I expect to get from the ‘average’ adult whale? And how efficent would this fuel be compaired to diseal (I would assume a gas engine wouldn’t work that well).
If you plan on just digging the wax out of a sperm whales head, you’ll end up with about 500 gallons. There’s a fair amount of confusion over this number on the web, but it appears to me that the sites claiming numbers as high as 4,000 gallons are confusing the spermaceti oil, with the oil that’s obtained by rendering the whale’s blubber. That lower quality oil can amount to about 4000 gallons from a typical 55 foot sperm whale.
The somewhat smaller Right whale (~50 feet) could yield ~7000 gallons of oil from its fat layers.
The oil could probably be made to run a diesel engine, but I’ve no idea how effieciently it would burn.
kanicbird, I have to assume that this is a purely theoretical question. Right?
First, if large-scale whale-hunting were resumed, it would quickly put the whale population back to where it was 80 years ago, right on the edge of extinction, without making more than a very small dent in in the current energy crisis.
Second, if you tried it, you’d get a shipload of Greenpeace types trying to harpoon you–and I’d happily pay 5 bucks for my chance to put that harpoon where I think it would do the most good. 
Next question? 
Satyagrahi it is in the sense that I am not personally considering taking to the high seas. I am somewhat curious about the feasibility of biodesil from such sources, and how much can be yielded if the killings were managed to be a substainable/renewable resorce.
(Which BTW the gas running those greenpiece boat in not ) 
I’ve never understood why whale coal projects haven’t garnered more interest.
Satyagrahi, I think you pretty much have to accept this question in the tongue-in-cheek manner that it was asked.
But if you’re going to be uptight about it, consider that the cost of whale oil in * 1864 * was $1.77/gallon (http://www.oilhistory.com/pages/Whale/prices.html) and that in 1957 it was $5.00/ounce. Prices at Honest Ahab’s Pump and Go aren’t going to be competitive, even if they give out Green Stamps, free dinner glasses, AND wash your windshield.
It’s hard to imagine whaling to be cost effective on a do-it-yourself basis, either. You can get, at the extreme upper end, 100 barrels (3200 gallons) of oil out of a sperm whale. But that’s at the end of a long disgusting process that begins with “First, catch a whale.” Something you’re not going to be doing from a sea kayak.
Well, I was hoping the OP was tongue-in-cheek and I expected my slightly over-the-top response to be take the same way. But…
From kanikbird’s response, it appears that he was not 100% facetious. It seems that he has a question and seriously thinks whale oil could be a feasible and defensible resource.
Where do I begin?
As Finagle said, it is hard to imagine that whale oil could ever, under any circumstances, be solution, or partial solution, to the energy crisis. Hunting and blubber-boiling at a level guaranteed to be “renewable” would contribute so little, at such a high cost, that it flatly could not be economically competetive. You’re talking of a relatively rare and slow-growing carnivore here. The cost is never going to become low.
Second, whether kanikbird supports the idea or not, a large percentage of the population take seriously the many studies which show whales to be intelligent enough to be put on a par with primates such as chimpanzees. If chimpanzees held large amounts of oil, would we breed and maintain large stocks of them for boiling down? I don’t think it would be accepted just for the purpose of powering the latest, biggest SUV…though I could be wrong.
Third, there are better alternatives. For some years now, companies have been attempting to get oil as a byproduct of microbes…which would be good as even Greenpeace doesn’t have a thing for microbes. A little more development, some bioengineering, and I think we may see this as a reality. A little Googling on topics such as ‘microbe petroleum’ should could up with good results…
kanikbird, I pick up the hint from your username that you may be a native inhabitant of Alaska. True?
I apologize for the occasional incoherence in that post; I was typing while attempting to pay attention to a very boring meeting at work.
That’ll teach me.
If it came down to it, the ONLY source of oil was chimps I would have do doubt they would be harvested. If not to power SUV’s then to power generators to keep live support equipment operating in hospitals.
You mentioned geneticly engineered microbs, would it be so bad to create a genetically engineered, non-inteligent, non-pain feeling whale like creature designed to grow fast to be harvested for oil? I would guess some would think so, microbs would be the best way I suppose, no one is going to care if trillions of these little guys die, but one whale like creature w/o a mind would have greenpiece bustin’ down the door (again after ariving in their SUV’s).
As for current whale harvesting for fuel, it does seem that the costs would far outweigh the gain, so I think whales are safe.
No the user name is Native American (aka Indian) in origin but much further south.
What about fats from medical waste; specifically liposuction - anyone have any figures on what kind of production rate there is for it?
That’s interesting, I have heard recently how people are whineing how only the rich can afford to be thin, becasue all low carb foods are expensive (not that I agree w/ that), but going on that premise, perhaps poor people can eat cheap crap and get paid to get their fat sucked out, it’s a win-win for them.
(Ths is just a fun toung-in-cheek post for those who don’t know, please don’t send the people for the ethical treatment of poor people to harpoon my boat)
There’s a joke there somewhere but I’m too tired to find it.
It would undoubtedly be more efficient to take the human out of the chain and convert the fats in the foodstuffs directly into fuel, but since people are going to eat, get fat and have liposuction, it seems a waste to throw it away.