bio fuel

[godly]

Hi Everyone

Has anyone ever run there disco on bio fuel (made from old cooking oil)

If so has anyone got any advice before I give it a go.

Thanks

[Ratty43]

I did last autumn, properly made bio-diesel from chip shops etc and processed professionally. Ran fine mixed 50:50 with diesel (apart from having to change the fuel filter after a week) up until the snow and the cold came.... At that point I spent an entire day trying to start it, drain battery recharge etc and filled up with diesel when I succeeded 8 hours later with much vowing never to use it again. In reality it is fine day to day when te weather is good but in the cold it didn't work for me, that said there are plenty of people who run on it with no problems so you'll have to make your own mind up.

[defender dave]

you can add petrol to it this time of year to stop it gelling up .

[Landy-Novice]

add petrol to diesel and cooking oil.??? :blink: sounds dodgy.....

[Retroanaconda]

A gallon of petrol in the diesel tank of the tractors/machinery at work is a pretty common anti-cold measure

[godly]

Thanks for the help. I think I will wait untill the summer untill I do it.

[TheRecklessEngineer]

If its proper, well made bio, then you won't have any problems at all.

However, commercially available stuff to the above spec will only be slightly cheaper than diesel. The loss of mpg will make it more expensive than diesel overall.

[finnarne]

What kind of engine do you have ?

I have a 200 TDI, on which was running 21% WVO up until August. After that I thought I was going to Drive a lot less, and have not collected as much as I used to do. I can fetch ~35 litres a week, but I wont use WVO if I dont run to much. Now I have some other stuff I need to run my car on. Mostly 5 year old diesel and ~10 year old paraffin(? not sure if it's the correct word)

I've also added some petrol to the WVO, it makes the waste in it drop to the bottom.

I think I added ~2dl of petrol to ~8 liters of WVO.

[Boydie]

Bio-Diesel. There are several kits available on the internet. Most consist of three 200 litre drums. The raw oil is poured into the first drum, from here one of three pumps filter it through at least 3 grades of filter, the final one removes any molecule larger than 5 microns, a micron being 1000th of a milimeter. From here the oil is transfered into the second tank, in this tank the second pump circulates the oil through a desicant to remove any vestiges of moisture that may be present. At this stage the oil is taken through catalitic filter to remove the non-soluble fats, (you can use these to make soft soap with the addition of lye). A hydrometer is then used to determine the cetain rating of the raw fuel oil, on average a Ce. of 70 can be expected, to increase this to the required 85 minimum ethanol then has to be added.

The final Bio-diesel mix has to be agitated to allow the ethanol to easily combine with the vegtable oil. It can then be transfered into your fuel tank and used. Bio_diesel will readily combine with conventional mineral diesel but like all vegtable oils it coagulates in lower temperatures, if you intend to use it during winter months with an ambient temperature below 15 degrees celcius a fuel tank with a thermostatically controlled heater element will be required required to raise the Bio up to around 24 degrees.

[WideEyedFox]

I ran Bio purchased from a place in Dudley for a few summers 3-4 years ago. The reason I say "summers" is because as the colder months came my Disco became harder and harder to start and would run "lumpy". I would swap the fuel filter more often on Bio, and the MPG was down a bit - however at the time the cost, even with travel still made it cheaper.

As prices went up, the reduced MPG + the additional filters did not make it much cheaper at all - so I went back to regular diesel.

[Boydie]

Incidentally, if you intend to give home brewed Bio-Diesel a go, and produce it to Euro5 standards, (less than .03% moisture, 90Cetain rating and molecules of less than 3 microns) then it is possible but you need to be anally intentive (but for an old fart like me a lot of fun) and even then I wouldnt recomend running it in an electronic diesel injected engine as it will stuff up the exhaust oxygen sensors. If however like me you run a old style mechanical diesel (300TDi) and you want to save some money then go for it.

My costs are as follows:-

Vegtable oil, used. $0.00 (free from my local internationaly renowned Scottish local fast food store-- they buy good quality vegetable oils)

New virgin Sunflower Vegetable Oil, -- used as a 25% new / 75% used blend, $85.00 inc. GST for 200 litres.

Ethanol. $48.50 inc. GST for 20 litres.

Allow for power, the dessicant which has a limited life, and filter mediums (in my case various sizes of rolls of kitchen and toilet paper) say $12.50 per 200 litres.

Cost of producing 200 litres of Bio for me in NSW Australia is around $65.00 or $0.32 cents per litre as against $1.52 per litre of mineral diesel at the pump, at least $0.85 cents of which is federal and state taxes.

If I were to amortise the cost of the plant, at $3850.00 over say 12,000 litres then the cost per litre rises to $0.64 cents, still a fair saving. 200 litres lasts me around a month so the 12000 litres is a 5 year amortisation period which would be a commercially acceptable time period.

Even so, in Bullaburra in winter the temperature on some days drops to below 0 Centigrade and we occasionally do get snow so I only use the Bio during the summer months when the temperature is above 20 degrees.

Oh, and no nasty polution !!!!