This is great info everyone! Has anyone ever made BD themselves?

(also a parrothead!!!)

 

From what i remember its pretty complicated, and i dont think you can get all the additives without special liscinsing. but might be wrong on that.

 

Been away in VT where I'm off line. Never got to meet the biodiesel guy cause I got food poisoning. What an awful experience.

Thanks about splaining the difference between btu's and cetane rating. Makes sense now.

About making biodiesel. Check out how to do it yourself here. Several recipes available online, but this one seems straight forward. Its not hard to do if you can follow a recipe exactly. If you took highschool chemistry it will be easier for you to understand whats happening. Its called a transesterification reaction, which sounds awful complicated, but hey, its just words. Basically all you do is mix Sodium Hydroxide (NaOH, Red Devil lye) and methanol (auto racing fuel, also found in gas line antifreeze, usually heet brand) to give you sodium methoxide. The sodium methoxide gets mixed with your waste or virgin veggie oil. Heat and stir. The oil should seperate into two layers, biodiesel on top, and glycerine on the bottom. Decant the biodiesel, clean/polish and your ready to go. Of course if you do it w/o following the recipe, you will end up with a mess of goop (like I did once).

As indicated, the chemicals you need are readily available. You can actually pick the stuff up at the grocery store. If you are doing this in bulk, the methanol will be cheaper do buy in in larger quantities as racing fuel at a speed shop or the like.

A word of caution if you are going to dabble in street chemistry.....these are dangerous chemicals!! Read the disclaimers and precautionary statements that should accompany recipe's for biodiesel. All the chemicals are nasty, specially the methanol and sodium methoxide. BE CAREFUL!!

Bottom line, you can make it yourself for pretty cheap from waste veggie oil, and it ain't really that hard.

I really want to try making the stuff when the summer comes, and I finish my house addition.

-Shawn

P.S. "Some of the guys have modified their injector control modules to put out slightly higher voltage, which opens the injectors quicker and increases power." This is the 10k resistor mod, yes?

 

There are allot of places to get it here thru the MFA but it is mainly set up for farm equipment. You can buy it for trucks at B20 or higher but the one down side that I have heard about it is that the guys that use it with a high mix (B20 or above) have to change there fuel filters more often. Seems like it gums them up. Maybe they are mixing it to rich.

 

Prolly not that its running rich, rather biodiesel (esters) is very much a solvent. So any gunk in the tank gets cleaned up, but ends up in the fuel filter. Once things are cleaned up, filter changes will be as usual.

This is very much like synthetic oils, (some made from esters) which also have solvent properties. This is why some folks change the oil filter rather frequently when switching to synthetic. Like the bio-d, its dissolving any accumulated gunk.

-Shawn

 

I am new to the site, is there anymore info or replies concerning using Biodiesel in a PSD?,the last entry I see was on 02/27/04 by SMB. I have a 2003 E-350 SD. EB. 12pass Van w/7.3L Turbo PSD. I am in So. Cal. O.C. area. I would like to use, and buy Biodiesel and/or make it my self using used Veg. or cooking oil. Is There anyone else in my area with same interest?

Mark-

 

Check out BioDiesel.org. There's tons of info there.

 

I'm a big fan of biodiesel, and maybe it's because I'm an Iowa farmboy. I do admire all those posts about how crop production is bad for the environment and creates groundwater and non-point source pollution (sarcastically spoken). That can be true, but I bet you won't find a person more aware of those problems than the farmer himself. And for the statement about roundup ready soybeans and being able to just pour on the herbicides, that would be mildly false. Yes, it does make it easier to manage weeds, but I guarantee farmers aren't out there pouring on the herbicides, it does cost to spray.
But about biodiesel in the PSD, I try to run it whenever I can (b2). I get better mileage and feel better about it knowing the effects it has on my engine, such as the improved lubricity and burning cleaner.

 

Hey today is National Biodiesel Day. Now if I could only find somewhere around here that sells the stuff. I'm all for helping out the local(national) economy. Keep the money here instead of sending it across the big blue.
Mike

 

Finally ran a tank of B-20 in my 01 f-250. Can't say I noticed a difference in mileage (with one tankful) or power or noise even. I did notice that the smell coming from the exhaust was much easier on the nose though. It still smelled like diesel exhaust, but just much less concentrated. $2.25 a gallon. While the guy buys the stuff he sells from a distributor, he's also got high school kids making the stuff from waste oil, and tweaking the process as part of an alternative fuels class. Not for sale, but for science. I imagine to sell that stuff, you would have to make sure it meets the ASTM standards for bio-d.

Farmboy, I didn't mean to bash farmers as a whole. Where would we be without? I apoloigze if I offended. Its the giant ADM factory farms that get me going. Not the mom and pop operations. And thats part of the problem. The mom and pop operations are a dying breed. As far as spreading stuff on a field, $$$ spent as related to yield controls what or how much you put out there, sure, but often times nitrogen is considered cheap insurance when trying to maximize yield. Hell, our local cooperative extension often advise the farmers to put some more fertilizer out there, just in case. And out here at least where the groundwater table is quite shallow, that can be a problem. Ahh, anyway my point there was just that making biodiesel from virgin oil isn't as environmentally friendly as making it from waste oil.

Anyone make the stuff yet? Diesel is back up to over $2.00 a gallon again here.

-Shawn

 

i have read that bio-diesel is not good on the o-rings that your injectors use in the 7.3's. bio-diesel is good in the benz mentioned before because the fuel system is mechanical. they do make o-rings that are compatible with bio-diesel