Biodiesel Questions

There are numerous websites out there on biodiesel. It's not difficult to make, however one cannot escape the need to pay Excise Duty on the fuel that is consumed on public roads in the UK. Ordinarily, of course, this is collected at roadside filling stations.

The user manual for each vehicle should give guidance on the use of commercial biodiesel blends. In many cases, some elastomeric components in the fuel delivery system can become susceptible to attack. As always, check the vehicle manufacturer's recommendations before proceeding; it is no use trying cheap bio fuel if the vehicles die through fuel system problems!

Hello Conrad Coetzee

As mentioned above, by PWSlack the main problem is rubber and plastic components in the fuel system, which includes the "expensive to repair" distributor pump.

Here to recondition a 4-cylinder distributor pump, and replace all seals with "Biodiesel Resistant" components costs around NZ$1,000, which equates around UK£300+.

When you have done that, (Tell the Diesel Engineer you want one, BEFORE he starts),ensure you do get a certificate in writing that the diesel Engineer has used "Biodiesel Resistant" Seals, or you'll end up like a friend of mine, who later found he failed a Warrant of Fitness, because of fuel leaks a few months after the expensive job was done, and he had to pay, all over again, for that repair to be re-done, properly.

Acidity (pH) of the Biodiesel needs to be carefully checked and adjusted too, or acidic corrosion will chew through fuel tank, fuel lines, fuel filter, the expensive distributor pump, and injectors.

Ensure very fine filters are used, to keep contaminating parts (potato chip pieces, batter from fish, and the like), from entering the fuel tank, or your engine may suddenly stop at an awkward time, perhaps in peak hour traffic, or at high speed on the Motorway, and a diesel engine which stops in that way, may be very expensive in terms of an accident, plus the repairs.

Straining of the Biodiesel through cloths in a large funnel is just a start, you really need a proper heated filter press, running with a vacuum pump to lower the above-liquid pressure, to get rid of the contaminants.

Here we have found that an older type of "Transformer Oil Filter", often made in the UK around 50 to 70 years ago, and used in older type Electricity Substations, is easily modified to do the clean-up job, and the finished product may be then safely stored in 40 gallon drums, ready for use.

You'll not find it as easy a job as some Websites make out, but if you have a good source of oils, you can make big savings if you are prepared to do the dirty work, and it can be rather dirty.

As PWSlack has stated above, Excise Tax is something to watch out for, whether you pay it or not is up to you, you are not "legally able to sell the product for use in motor Vehicles" without expensive Certification, which negates the cost advantage.

The process is better done out of town, perhaps on a farm, as it is far less liable to have complaining neighbours.

If you use a vegetable oil source, be aware that most are easily detected, by the aroma of curry, fried chicken, Chinese cooking, fish & chips etc, which wafts in your wake, easily detected by the Transport Authorities, who are now well aware there are motoring users who are trying to "cheat" (That's how they see it), the Excise Duty.

Hope that assists you.

Kind Regards....

Thanks, yup I have looked into it somewhat before posting on here, the plan is to use a 400 micron filter and an automated mixing unit for ease of manufacture as time is a major factor for me.

I am certainly also looking at testing each batch to ensure quality of product and conformity with the british EN standard for fuel. however I have noticed that there seems to be a trend for adding hydrochloric acid to the mixing process in the States I assume that this just helps to start breaking down the oil and speed up the process but I have not found any other information on this as yet. It looks like most people over here dont use the acid mix at all and I was wondering why??

also as far as the duty goes I think its 30.5pence per litre of fuel but that is only applicable if the fuel is manufactured for the purpose of selling or if you use more than 2500 litres per annum.

Thanks for the info on the seals that could have been expensive!!

Conrad

Hello again, Conrad Coetzee

Check out this device, see if they have improved it:

Teeny Reactor Pumps Out Biodiesel

Kind Regards....

The acid step is to increase the yield. Biodiesel is a solvent & at higher concentrations will flush the crud out of your fuel system, carry spare fuel filters! Sparky is right about having to make sure the finalPH is pretty close to neutral. On a small scale you're probably going to spend $0.30 per liter[us] or more just for methanol, chemicals, heat............. It all depends how much you have to pay to gather vegetable oil.

My usual set of links below:

National Biodiesel Board site

http://www.biodiesel.org/

The oldest BioDiesel forum [most info]

http://biodiesel.infopop.cc/eve/ubb.x

The thumbnail explanation

http://www.biodiesel-fuel.co.uk/how-to-make-biodiesel/

US Department of Energy

http://www.eere.energy.gov/afdc/altfuel/biodiesel.html

US EPA

http://www.epa.gov/region09/waste/biodiesel/

National Renewable Energy Laboratory

http://www.nrel.gov/learning/re_biofuels.html

Methanol prices

http://www.methanex.com/products/methanolprice.html

Biodiesel is a solvent & at higher concentrations will flush the crud out of your fuel system, carry spare fuel filters!

Yes bio-diesel is a greater detergent than petroleum diesel and bio-diesel will purge the dirt left behind from using petroleum diesel. But after using bio-diesel consistently filters will last longer...because the bio-diesel will not leave crud deposits.

I should have indicated that any crud problems you may experience will be when you 1st start using biodiesel. A prudent strategy is to start at lower concentrations & work your way up. At blends as low as 2% will give you markedly increased engine life due to the higher lubricity of biodiesel. Most emmissions wil be lower with NOX being about the same to slightly higher. Depending on the application you may have a slight decrease in mileage.

Mostly good stuff, some things to be aware of.

Still the key is can you get feedstock for price that makes sense.

The tax issue is only going to get more serious.

You can also burn the veg oil without converting, not as clean, not legal & requires additional equipment.

The tax issue is only going to get more serious.

Yes the tax issue won't be going away but taxes can be handled by using software designed to compile the data and interface with tax preparation software. These are easily acquired from trucking industry resources and are approved by the DOT and IRS and state agencies. Though you need to be serious of honestly reporting mileage figures or you could find yourself at the 'gray rock motel' for and extended stay.

There are a number of sources for the information you seek on the Internet.

Biggest word of caution is the payment of the Excise and or Use Taxes on the fuel that you do make.(Am US based)

If you local tax collector determines you are using untaxed petrol they will own you and every asset you in your life.

I write software for petroleum distribution companies and I know our tax agents are vicious.

Have a great day.

MOST PEAPLE IS COMPLETLY BLIND OF WHAT CAUSES THE GLOBAL TEMPERATURE -WHICH IN TURN IS THE CAUSE OR SOURCE FOR THE CLIMATE CHANGES-

HERE, YOU ALL TALK ABOUT AND BIODISEL AS A MAGIC MEAN TO GET AWAY OF DIESEL -A PETROLEUM DERIVATIVE- BUT THIS PRACTICE GETS THING WORST -SINCE WRONGLY PRODUCED FORM GRAINS SHUT FOOD PRICES UP TO A NOCIVE LEVEL FOR HUMANS-

BESIDES, WE DONT SEE THAT DIESEL -IT SELF- IS PRODUCED FROM A NATURAL BIOFUEL -PETROLEUM- THAT TOGHETER WITH ALL BURNT FOSILFUEL AND ALCOHOLS ARE THE SOURCE OF HEAT THAT KEEPS ACTUAL ATMOSPHERIC TEMPERATURE INCREASE.

NONE GREEN HOUSE EFFECTS CAN BE THE SOURCE OF HEAT THAT BRAKES AN INTELLIGENT MOTHER NATURE ITERACTION -THE SUN-EARTH THERMAL EQUILIBRIUM THAT HAPPENS TO BE EVER SINCE-.... NO WAY.... IT IS A HUMANS MISTAKE TO BE STACK ON FUELS AS THE ONLY SOUCE OF ENERGY, DONT BLAME THE GREAT SUN -SOLAR ENERGY IS FREE, CLEAN AND HARMLESS- BUT WE DONT USE IT . WHAT A SHAME!!!!!!. WE MUST STOP USING FOSILFUELS NOW.

Hello CHEMA

Using CAPITALS in a Forum is the same as shouting rudely at the person reading your Post.

All Internet Forums are the same: USING CAPITAL LETTERS THE WAY YOU DID, is regarded by the reader, as bad manners, and I trust you did not intend that.

Kind Regards....

Hi Chema,

For all of you who haven't run into Chema before

Here's an excerpt from an old thread:

REAL CAUSES:

Real causes are down here, where HUGE amounts of waisted heat from more than 6 billions tons of hot gases -per year- are generated while burning fuels -in motor vehicles, water heaters, boilers, thermoelectric generators, driers, ranges, ovens, etc-. We dont have to be scientist to understand a math equation, showing that the problem results from the extra added heat to atmosphere:

IR sun energy + extra waisted heat from burning fuels = atmosphere overheating

= more evaporation = denser clouds = flooding storms = polar deice = actual kaoz

- Do you know what happen now that petroleum XX century is gone and Solar XXI century will replace fuels-WITH FREE AND CLEAN NATURAL ENERGY?- ......very simple.....the depleted AND EXPENSIVE petroleum will go down to 1 dollar per barrel and that will crack petroleum industry....... See? ...ENERGY will be free then, and peaple will save money to buy many thing else -as a free-maintance electric car ----and so on----- politically impossible?....IT SEEMS LIKE FICTION MOVIE….....but there are...

TWO SOLUTIONS:

1. Urge to replace all combustion devices, equipments and engines -WITH SOLAR AND ELECTRIC POWERED ONES-.

2. As well as urgent is to reforest the world with billions of trees – they are magic factories that will clean air from CO2, by:

Sucking CO2 + Absorbing solar UV and solar heat = to return us pure and fresh OXIGEN -instead-

Trees never heat the air -so- the craisy green house effect does not happen -that's a lie-

The true is that are cooking our self's in this global pot, due to PETRO-effect -nothing else-.

HOW YOU CAN HELP? :

- I urge any body who has responsability of enviromental care and have funds -you must support any projects where products (vehicles or equipments) pursue this change over -to a new solar and electric eco-culture-.

-I urge Presidents all -to issue compulsory regulations to stop using any apparatus, device or engines where combustion of fuels take place -of any hidrocarbons (liquid or gas) alcohols, biofuels, carbons or hidrogen too- because all react exothermicaly generating the hot gases that over-heat the air -depleting oxigen O2 and ozone O3 as well while they burn to CO2 -which ixcess is getting a letal concentration level, too-.

• Now, I hope you understand it better -the real global warming problem- & communicate it to all your friends -what is going on- to become more that GREEN peaple -but ECOLOGY ORIENTE PEAPLE, co-responsible- don't relay on heaven help, only. PLEASE STOP BURNIG FUELS guys.

jmjr, Senior Chem. Eng, MS from UMass,

Zapopan, jal. Mexico

BESIDES, WE DONT SEE THAT DIESEL -IT SELF- IS PRODUCED FROM A NATURAL BIOFUEL -PETROLEUM- THAT TOGHETER WITH ALL BURNT FOSILFUEL AND ALCOHOLS ARE THE SOURCE OF HEAT THAT KEEPS ACTUAL ATMOSPHERIC TEMPERATURE INCREASE.

Don't pay attention to that large fiery glowing ball that the earth rotates around. Completely disregard the obvious it is a government scam to delude your intellect.

They call it 'SOL' key for solution to ice age an other ridiculous discourse.

"WE MUST STOP USING FOSILFUELS NOW." [sic] Why don't you start CHEMA? Do not use anything powered by any fossil fuel, nuclear power or hydropower and those are all considered harmful to the environment. Do not buy, eat or wear anything transported or made using those energies. Do not cook your food over a fire, it makes CO2, eat it raw. Grow your own organic food. You will have to use stone tools, because metal requires use of those bad energies. You won't even be able to use solar panels because making them uses the forbidden energies. Live in the stone age.

Be very sure that the end of the Ice Age was due to non-existent people burning too much. That the warm period when the Vikings were growing wheat in Greenland was due to their campfires and that the deep cold called the Little Ice Age of the 1600's was because all those people stopped burning things. Deny the effects of the Sun on Global temperature all you want. Insist it was the heat from fires or that it was the CO2 from fires that caused the warming and the cooling if you want, it won't make you right.

The only source of heat for Earth is the Sun. There is so much more CO2 produced naturally by the Earth and natural climate change as to make that produced by Man insignificant. Man does make too many particulates and sulfur and nitrogen compounds, which are the "real" pollution that needs to be cleaned up. The CO2 hysteria is a political power grab.

Fortunally -no all peaple are alike- which preffer not to make any move in this matter to relieve the global heating problem, but critizicing only.

Intead of going into useless discutions -like this- I preffered to start all ready my contribution, designing and making solar heaters for any liquid -even water- and the goal is to replease the billion gas heaters now in use.

Also, to not live in the stone age, my next product development is a solar stoves for your kitchen, to replease the billion and a half gas ranges in use right now.

Dont waist your time and mind, we must use our inteligence to solve the ploblems or to push solutions, not to continue generating problems or to be against solutions.

Any way, keeping stack to petroleum has a price -and very hi prices now- wont you?

TAGANAN READ THIS AND THINK IT OVER:

"The problem in my life and other people's lives is not the
absence of knowing what to do, but the absence of doing it."
Management Consultant, Peter Drucker

Your action for today is to do something you have been avoiding
doing.

Suggestions regarding alternate energy use are most welcome, but very few are implemented. Here in India we have Sun energy in plenty, in summer sun is burning down on earth as some places temp. goes upto 45 deg.C. Many poor people die due to sunstroke, but there is very little use of sun energy. We also have plenty of small springs where we can tap Hydro energy but very few have installed mini hydro plants. We are surronded by sea and have good wind blowing around sea coast but few wind mills in sight. Suresh Sharma.

I agree with Taganan, that we dont need to go back to the stone age, never again.

But we have to get away of the Petroleum age, and point to a healty newly born Solar age -a Quetzalcoatl XXI Century, with some help from EOS god too-

So, eagler peaple from any where that live global disasters reallity -like you Suresh Sharma in India, or me in Mexico, etc- all together we must promote and push development of technology to get that target, and purchase it too.

Chema - My reference to living in another stone age was to be humorous about the environmental extremists in the population. I have nothing against any form of energy and think that developing new ones is great. Solar does have its limits as a useful source of power. It is expensive to make the solar equipment for electric power. Figure the solar energy per square meter as electricity and then figure how many square meters it would take to replace all the other present sources of electric power. That is a large chunk of Mexico that would have to be covered by solar collectors. Solar doesn't work at night or on cloudy days. There is no inexpensive or practical way to store enough electricity to last through the night, so using solar electricity would change the way we live. Hydropower is really a use of solar power, but the environmentalists won't allow dams because they change the environment. They don't destroy it, just change it.

Where solar power really won't work is in vehicles and aircraft. We might be able to adjust to rising at dawn and going to bed at sunset, but solar cannot power vehicles or aircraft. Making Hydrogen to use as fuel increases the need for electricity and H is not an efficient, easy to handle and store fuel.

In economics labor is traded, bartered, for goods and services. If you work one hour for enough energy to live as you do now, what happens to your standard of living when you have to work 5 hours for the same energy? It goes down, because you then have fewer hours to trade for clothes, food, a home, medicine and everything else. Since your hours are represented by pieces of paper called money, if the price of anything goes up then you have less money for everything else. All the solar energy sources cost more money than hydropower, nuclear power or coal power. Do you really expect people to choose to lower their standard of living just to go solar?

CO2 is not a pollutant. You emit about 1.25 kg [2.5 lbs] a day just by breathing and the plants take in your CO2 and put out oxygen. The CO2 hysteria should not be a factor in searching for better, cheaper and cleaner sources of energy, since we should be doing that anyway. Please keep an open mind to the fact that there are other sources of energy than the Sun and that for now they may be more practical.

The Sun is an example of fusion energy, perhaps rather than collecting solar energy we should be working more on how to make our own fusion energy here on Earth.

Thanks for calling me eviromental extremist. I preffer to play the safer way for our home plannet, applying experience in handly IR radiation, which apparently you ignore, so that under estimate energy from solar radiation -a sourse 6000 times the daily global energy needs.

If you read my last comments, I keep busy developing ways to harvest IR solar radiation to heat liquids, water and air, or to cook solid food in your kitchen -with apropiates ease to use inexpesives devices- which mass production projects will be implemented as soon as finantial funds are solved.

You will love them all, since you dont have to pay for energizing means any more.

Seems that, You need to be aware what is going on applied technologies to harvest it (as electropannels, thermopannels, light or even to fuse metals). I recommend you to subcribe to a good sourse as www.technologyreview.com -a daily scientific resume from MIT- a free web site.

Have a nice and busy day.

Conrad Coetzee,

I applaud your efforts to pursue the bio-diesel alternative to fossil fuels. It is the next logical step in the right direction and in many cases, utilizes unused bio-waste.

It's unfortunate that this thread was taken so far off topic by one person who is extremely intolerant of a gradual transition away from crude oil. People like this are what give 'environmentalists' a bad name.