Biodiesel or vegoil

[nitrousjunkie]

just wondering, how many homebrewer on here own diesels and run bio or vegoil? I've got a 2001 F-250 and I am wanting to go with some kind of "alternative" fuel. with diesel almost $4.00/ gal, bills get kind of hard to pay and driving is really painful. Any thoughts, comments?

 

[david_42]

Well, biodiesel isn't much cheaper than dino. I've used it a bit, but the only outlet is a fuel-wasting 40 miles away, so I buy only when I'm in the area. SWO is a major investment in time and effort, the first being the conversion, the second is sourcing waste oil. It's gotten valuable enough that people are stealing it. Then there is the problems involved in cleaning it for use.

There was a project locally to plant canola for biodiesel, but the first year all of the fields failed after a unusual frost. That killed the whole thing. One of my neighbors took a real hit.

They are both great ideas, if only a few people are doing it.

Lots of info here: http://www.biodiesel.org/resources/fuelfactsheets/default.shtm

 

[nitrousjunkie]

I was thinking of producing my own bio. But like you said, finding the waste oil can be the hard part. To run vegoil, I found a kit on www.greasecar.com that seems to be rather easy to install. But then again, im handy with a wrench. I know the startup cost is alot, but in the end would be worth it i think.

 

[jbford]

there is a lot of waste involved in producing biodiesel. There is a waste stream of very high pH that is soapy and you can't legally put it down the drain

you will need methanol and sodium hydroxide in addition to the vegetable oil (which is now very expensive), or you can use sodium methoxide which is probably unobtainum for the backyard chemist.

biodiesel will gel at temps below freezing, so be prepared to switch back to regular diesel in winter.

using waste cooker oil adds a whole other dimension to the problems.

 

[Jaybird]

can you Just run 50/50 vegi oil and diesel???
JJ

 

[david_42]

You can run with a blend, but most SW(V)O installations just use dino until the engine & SWO system are warmed up, then they switch. The few people I know that run SWO, also switch to dino for a few minutes before stopping the engine just to minimize startup problems.