I am still pondering the veggielution, or burning straight wvo, or the "home bio lab" making your own biodiesel.. Seems like the price of equipment would be close, but making your own bio would be safer on the truck. Just checking to see what the gurus are thinking..

 

I really like brewing my own BD. Personally I like the ability to control my own fuel blah blah blah. Also I like being able to NOT modify the truck for thr WVO, but modify the WVO for the truck. Just my opinion

 

Thread moved to proper forum.

 

I'm in the other camp. I like just having to get oil, filter it and dump it in and drive. Having to deal with methanol, and lye to me seem like a hassle. Then you have to measure everything to the exact gram, then mix it all together. Hope and pray you don't end up with a 50 gallon batch of soap. You have 20% waste with each batch to get rid of some how. You have to wash it and then dispose of the waste water.

All this adds up to work. Convert the car/truck and drive. Spend your time doing something else.

2005 F250 PSD
Plant Drive Two tank WVO system.
Hotstk, Vormax, A1000, and Vegtherm

 

How do you usually collect your WVO, do they have a container you provide and how much time do you put towards collection? Thanks.

 

I have it kinda lucky. My brother-in-law brings me about 6 cubes a week from his resturants. I have two other resturants one puts it back into the cubes and I pick them up once a week on Sunday. The last place I have a drum that I suck out of about every 3 weeks.

You will have to collect no matter if you go the Bio way or the WVO way I spend about 2 hours a week filtering and collecting.

 

If you run Biodiesel you can get it commercially and never have to do anything. This to me seems to be the best alternative. Make changes to your vehicle and you have extra stuff to fail. Methanol is so common that it is found in Heet brand Antigel for gasoline engines, and Lye is a drain cleaner. Not very dangerous, but needs special precautions when dealing with larger quantities. Anyone can build an appleseed processor out of an old waterheater (usually free) and this can usually be built for under $100.00 (see www.biodieselcommunity.org for appleseed plans). WVO has free water in it that can damage injectors, and this is removed through the proper reaction and washing/drying process.

I would say running SVO (very expensive) would be an ok alternative, but still requires a large output of cash in the beginning to convert the vehicle. The pricing is nowhere near the same as converting a vehicle costs thousands (unless you jerry rig it), where as around $300 dollars would put you into a nice Processor set-up. An additional $339 for a new water heater (80 gal price was from local HD) if you cannot find a used on for free. There is no comparison between the two. With Biodiesel you can run 100% all the time (except in cold weather at this time) in all vehicles without modification, whereas you still have to rely on Diesel or Biodiesel to run on while the Vegoil gets hot enough and you still have the cold weather issues (the colder the longer to heat, and if engine does not produce enough heat it might never make it to temp. I could go on for hours, but IMHO there is no comparison.