Sorry I didn't see your question sooner. My buddy hooked up with this guy who works at a fiid distribution warehouse. The oil we're buying is 16 liter bags with a spout, packaged inside a carboard box. It is packed that way in 50-box pallets for use by a specific fast-food chain (which will remain nameless) . Anyway, when one of the bags leaks and gets oil all over a whole pallet load of the boxes, they can't tell which one leaked and they can't sell any oil stained containers to the restaurants - since there is a (remote) chance that any one of them could have a puncture that has allowed contamination into the oil. So the warehouse ends up with pallet loads of the stuff they need to get rid of but can't sell for food use.

Not sure if you were addressing this to me or to AndysFords, but I've already done extensive research and know how to produce bio. My buddy is actually making bio out of his half of the oil we bought. I actually contributed a reactor vessel and helped build parts of his setup. AndysFords has a good point about the pitfalls of producing bio. This oil has been producing some nice fuel, but there are numerous points in the process where it can go wrong.

So far the only problem he has run into is a wash timer that failed to shut off and overflowed his wash tank (and 25 gallons of bio) onto the ground. But it doesn't take much for a batch to go south on you. With oil you've paid close to $3 a gallon for, any glitches that ruin a batch aren't cheap.

Right now his production cost for bio is about $1.50 a gallon for the methanol, lye, and electricity, and since we paid $2.80 a gallon for the oil that brings the total cost to around $4.30 a gallon. Only fifty or sixty cents a gallon less than just buying regular diesel. Hardly worth all the effort IMO. If I burn mine pretty much as straight veg oil blended with diesel, I'll be saving right about 2 bucks a gallon.

Even if I spend a couple of hundred bucks adding a veg oil heating system to my car, it will pay back on this first 105 gallon batch of oil based on the $2 a gallon in savings. From then on its all "profit"...

 

Its hard to find cheap svo as its usually not available in other than the 4.5gal cubbies sold to resturants.
I get my svo used from resturants for free(at least for now) but I have to run it through a homemade centrifuge to clean and dewater it.
The cheapest retail svo is soy from Costco or some other big box outfit. It has risen in price from $2.20/ gal 2 yrs ago to about $6.00/gal.
This is still cheaper than buying small bottles of additive to increase lubrication.
Mike

 

I've been using about 1 gal per tank in my w123 300 for the last year and have had no problems. I use it primarily for lubricity. Coking problems would not be worth the minor savings so I'm not going toward a much higher blend.