I saw an article in the newpaper about something called bio-diesel that uses vegetable oil or lard to make a diesel fuel. Do any of you use that? What is the formula and process to make it? What modifications do you need to make to the motor to run it?

 

I hope you wanted the short version. Bio Diesel consists of long chain fatty acids that are derived from lipids (vegetable oil, animal fat or just plain old cooking oil) these oils when treated with a alcohol in the presence of a catalyst produces two products Bio-Diesel and Glycerine the latter is a natural degreaser, both are bio-degradable and non-hazardous. It can be used without modification since its performance is similar to petro-based diesel fuel. It does make sense the first diesel engine was designed to run on peanut oil. Also the air fuel mix is non-explosive

 

An additional benefit is the absence of sulphur. That means you can run longer oil change intervals, less engine corrosion, less contaminants, longer engine life, and cleaner emmissions.

 

Come on, really? The stuff sounds to good to be true. Why isn't it more popular? Are there any drawbacks verses conventional diesel fuel? If not, then tell who makes it so I can buy some stock in the company

 

Yes, I use biodiesel, it recently became available here in my part of Colorado. One place ships it in from out of state, another small business makes it locally from recycled restaurant fry grease. I buy it in 5-gallon jugs, when added to my SWB 29 gallon tank, it makes for about a 20% mix.

My truck runs great on it, and the engine seems quite a bit quieter, most of that annoying PSD cackle goes away. No difference in power or mileage. Bio has solvent properties so it cleans out the fuel system pretty good, so good that if you have an older truck you should probably change the fuel filter after a tank or two of bio runs through the system and dissolves the accumulated crud. It's also a good lubricant additive in itself. This is why I try to buy it when I'm near the local distributor, it works a lot like Stanadyne fuel additive.

My understanding is that bio reduces most exhaust emissions, running 100% bio is supposed to cut overall emissions by 90%. The exhaust smells sort of like popcorn or french fries. Outfits like the National Park Service are now using bio fuel in vehicles operated in environmentally-sensitive areas where smoke or even a diesel spill would cause problems.

There's a couple of downsides, too. Because it's a fairly new product, the price tends to be high, anywhere from $2.50/gallon and up, depending where you're at. They really need to give it a tax break like they do for ethanol gasoline. Most of it seems to be made from new soybean oil, not recycled oil. If you live up north, you can't run it 100% in the winter if you wanted to, it clouds and gells somewhat quicker than straight #2, almost everyone runs a 20% mix of the stuff.

FWIW, you can even make it yourself, all you need is some simple equipment, some barrels, the raw material like used restaurant deep-fry oil, some methanol and lye (which can be nasty if you have kids around). There's receipes on several nternet web sites. Most restaurants pay to have their old grease hauled away where it's been dumped in a landfill or used in animal feed, they should be glad to have someone take it for free. A single McDonalds probably goes through 25-50 gallons of fry oil a day, multiply that by how many restaurants, and you can see we're wasting millions of gallons of valuable American resource.

Bio has it's pros and cons, I'm happy with how it works, I don't mind paying a buck or two per tank more since I don't have to buy any fuel additives, my truck runs noticeably quieter, I don't mind supporting a new industry and it's a few bucks less dough that I'm forking over to Sheik Yerbootie. If you want to try it, go ahead, nothing to worry about.

Does that answer your questions?

 

It's not too good to be true. The reason it isn't more popular is that it's slightly more expensive than traditional diesel fuel and it isn't readily available at the pump. It only takes 3 units of fuel to produce 10 units of biodiesel, so it's a very cost effective fuel.

Check out this website:

http://www.biodiesel.org/buyingbiodi...s/default.shtm

If you get redirected to Motorhaven, copy and paste to your browser.

 

Very interesting subject. From what little I know it sounds like a legit alternative to conventional diesel fuel.....it even acts like a "high test" premium fuel. I'm gonna keep my eye on it.

Also, I was wondering if you ever heard of anyone running this stuff through their kerosene heaters? I thought about how dirty and smelly they can get using regular diesel fuel. Any comments on that?

 

During the heating oil shortage a few winters ago they mixed 20% biodiesel in with the heating oil.

 

Thanks for all the replies. I was thinking of getting an old Econoline van to convert over to a diesel as a second car. I have a bad habit of trying to re-invent the wheel and making my own fuel would be kind of neat.

 

Biodiesel is great, but if you're running an older vehicle, you do need to make sure that you don't have any rubber components in your fuel system, because the biodiesel will go right through them.

www.Biodiesel.org , as mentioned earlier, should answer any questions that you have.

 

It’s not too good to be true, bio-diesel just costs more. You don't have to worry about the health issues, contamination. Spoilage and whether or not contaminated animal by products are in the oil, which is a serious issue when it comes to BSE, mad cow disease etc. you are only really worried about cleanliness of the product, so it doesn't matter if its castor bean oil, olive oil or what mix of animal vegetable fats you have and if its coming from restaurants it will be a mix. It’s surprising but there are actually fuel oils harder to ignite than bio-diesel and diesels will run on them especially in hotter climates. The stuff does have a pleasant sorta aroma compared the the smell you usually get when trapped behind a city bus. I have heard that to reduce costs some of the bio-diesels have not added stabilizers or preservatives and are not recomended to be used if the vehicle will sit dormant for a significant period of time, but it's not a problem in a regularly used engine.

 

It does have a shorter shelf-life, and it also thickens at a higher temperature than conventional diesel, but these can all be worked around. In cold climates, most people run B20 - which is 20%bio and 80% conventional diesel, but you still recognize a pretty significant decrease in emissions. B100 - 100% biodiesel works quite well in the summer/warmer climates.

Also, it's a good thing to make sure you know where it's coming from. While it is easy to make, it needs to be made correctly, and one of the common mistakes is to not separate out the glycerin, which'll do a number on your fuel filter.

Also, there's a great deal of debate, at the moment, as to whether or not it's viable fuel source. While it's definitely a good additive, or substitute, for a certain percentage of the population, it's questionable whether enough bio-mass could be generated to support a widespread cross-over. The land-mass to amount of diesel produced is pretty inefficient, overall.

 

Yeah kinda makes me curious just how many acres of corn, olive trees or peanuts would it take to go a thousand miles in my wifes PS F250? Hmmm I wonder if emu oil works? I hate them damn emus they follow me all over the pasture and try to steal tools, I'm just glad they cannot roost over anything.

 

Good point, but used oils, like cooking oil, can be recycled. Animal fats can also be used. There is already a large source of materials that could be recycled and turned into biodiesel. I read in the past year about a bakery that started running their trucks on used cooking oil.

FYI, the diesel engine was originally designed to run on peanut oil.

 

Here ya go-

Average soybean production in, say, Illinois runs around 45 bushels per acre. There's around 11 lbs of oil in a bushel, or ~500 lbs/acre of raw soybean oil. It takes ~7.3 lbs of raw oil to make 1 gallon of diesel fuel, so diesel fuel production would be around 68 gallons/acre. If your truck gets 15 MPG, you can drive 1020 miles on the diesel fuel produced by one acre of soybeans per year.

On top of that, you get a whole bunch of soybean meal, which is a highly useable foodstuff and raw material for other comodities.

That's the equation using brand new oil. It's estimated that California alone disposes of 10 million gallons of restaurant oil and grease along with agricultural-by products per year, much of that has been dumped into landfills. Since California has about 1/10 the American population, we could guess that the USA dumps 100 million gallons of used food oil and grease per year.

While this is a drop in the bucket compared to how much petroleum we import per year, bio-diesel is starting to look more attractive now, doesn't it?