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4 comments
Participant

Join Date: May 2008
Posts: 1

gen set consumption of bio-deisel

05/11/2008 12:50 PM

Will it be cost effictive for me to run a diesel generator? I am a small restaurant owner and I discard approx. 80 lbs of fryer oil per day. My current electric cost is .102 cents per kwh. I am in Florida USA and here we have net metering, the power company will pay me .102 cents for each kwh I can produce. This answer does not have to include the price of the gen-set or the maintenence. How do I figure this out?

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Power-User

Join Date: Mar 2007
Location: South East of Las Vegas just far enough to see the lights but far enough to not hear the coins falling
Posts: 170
Good Answers: 5
#1

Re: gen set consumption of bio-deisel

05/11/2008 10:46 PM

If you are really in need of aux power look up CAPSTONE. They have a great record.

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Guru
United States - Member - New Member

Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: Madera Ca
Posts: 1338
Good Answers: 9
#2

Re: gen set consumption of bio-deisel

05/12/2008 2:14 AM

Useage is around 1/3 gallon per hour to produce 10 kw. Biodiesel will cost about $1.25 per gallon to produce, after you have equipment. diesel's around $3.90 before taxes.

your probably better off selling the bio as a transportation fuel

here's some producers in Florida who may be interested in buying your used oil:

American Biofuels, LLC (Florida)
5004 East Fowler Av #C325
Tampa, FL 33617
Phone:813 967 4082

Green Energy, LLC
P.O. Box 762
Windermere, FL 34786
Phone:407 509 6000

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Associate

Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: Northern Canada
Posts: 51
#3

Re: gen set consumption of bio-deisel

05/12/2008 10:27 AM

A normal rule of thumb for genset maintenance costs is $0.015/KWh. So, if you have a 50KWh genset with a 90% uptime, you could expect expect annual maintenance costs of around $6,000. This seems high, but it allows for the fact that you're going to rebuild the genset every couple of years, as well as frequent oil changes. I think it would be more cost effective to run your vehicle on the stuff, as the price of gasoline seems to have raced far ahead of electricity. Either way, fryer oil requires considerable cleaning so that it doesn't plug up your injectors.

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Power-User

Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: Somewhere in the hills of Pennsylvania, I think.
Posts: 196
Good Answers: 2
#4

Re: gen set consumption of bio-diesel

05/12/2008 11:33 AM

Actually, it's pretty easy to figure out. If you don't want to include the capital cost of the gen set or its maintenance, and the fuel is free, it's pretty much of a no-brainer. That said, on a practical basis, you can do better things with the wvo than generate electricity to sell to the power company. If you fry at 325 instead of 350 or 375 and filter the oil with a DE filter every night, you can get more than one day's use of that oil. Mine lasts 3 to 5 days depending on how hard we use the fryers. That's a hell of a savings right there. In addition, I blend my wvo with kerosene, filter the hell out of it, and burn it in my diesel truck. I generate enough of it to blend and heat my home. The only thing I throw away is the empty containers. Unless you want to do it as a hobby, turning it into bio-diesel is not cost effective on a small scale. You have to purchase the alcohol and lye, heat the waste oil, perform titration on the batch to determine the amount of lye needed, perform the reaction, wash the resultant fuel, store it and dispose of the residuals. Well, anyhow, that's my two cents in a nutshell.

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