Biodiesel Home Made?

Price of diesel here in Norfolk continues to rise at an alarming rate. Filled up yesterday at 97.9 per litre. MPG for the LR90 is quite good at just under 30 with a light right foot and reasonable speed and not much in the way of baggage.

Watching Dick Strawbridge on BBC2 a couple of days ago turned my thoughts to running the old girl on biodiesel - straight vegetable oil looks a bit too much of a challenge given the costs, short journeys and low mileage.

So, having a Google I've worked out the process for conversion and it looks reasonably simple on a very small scale. My question, at last, is just how much effort is required to create a reasonable tank full quantity on a regular basis. Small scale 'Dr Pepper' process looks quite labour intensive with all the filtering and washing required.

Anybody on the group had a go and if so how did you source the required quantities of methanol and sodium hydroxide?

I know that tax is an issue on the end product so is the input effort in terms of time and materials worth it for a light user?

Not an eco-nut but conscious of the need to reduce the anti 4x4 bias by being able to retort to the greens that i'm carbon neutral!!

Regards

Richard

PS - live next door to a pub and have a quantity of Adnams inside me so I hope all the above makes some sense.....

PPS - Dick Strawbridge traded an Audi for a LR90 as part of his go green project. Prime time TV too....

Reply to
RichardB
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Every time I've looked into making it myself, doing it properly involves a fair amount of chemistry that, if done incorrectly, can result in death, blindness or dementia (seriously). Buggering about with it as a total amateur just didn't seem worth the risks. I saw some sites that just gave the chemical processes without telling you about the dangers, and others that made the dangers very explicit.

All this was about 2 years ago so I can't remember any of the URLs any more.

Reply to
Ian Rawlings

To be fair to the sites I looked they all stressed the safety angle. The chemicals required can be dangerous if not used with appropriate protection and care.

I guess you have echoed my own, unexpressed, thoughts that home production is not worthwhile - yet....

Richard

Reply to
RichardB

Lets just hope they hurry up the development of this.

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Reply to
EMB

Doesn't it become nastier as Sodium Methoxide ?

Steve

Reply to
Steve

Have used Methanol for years in model plane engines - always tipping the stuff over me. As to the sodium hydroxide you will soon wash it off before it does any real damage - they use it in loads of hair products etc anyway.

The chemistry ain't the problem - it is good old customs and excise!!!

Reply to
Vince

have a squint at this option

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.as time goes on more efficient ways of using vegetable oils will come along.The potential for genetically modified oil crops producing higher flashpoint oils should have the "green at any cost" brigade behaving like the Ouzelum bird.Derek

Reply to
Derek

There is a little more to it than that, try having a peek around for the processes involved.

Reply to
Ian Rawlings

Have you seen this site yet?

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's a good make-it-yourself page, and also a list of suppliers.I buy fuel from their Glasgow guy at 80p/litre and have run up to 75% biodiesel in my land rover with great success. all best

Olly

--

1997 110 Station Wagon
Reply to
Olly R

On or around Fri, 21 Apr 2006 09:52:08 +1200, EMB enlightened us thusly:

""This is all about producing energy in such a way that it liberates people," said Goran Jovanovic, a chemical engineering professor at Oregon State University who developed the microreactor."

It's to be hoped that the scientific bollocks comes from the reporting and not the engineering professor. I know engineers aren't per se scientists, but it's a pretty basic tenet of the physical sciences that you can't create energy. In a car engine you convert chemical energy into sound, heat and mechanical energy (mostly). All the gadget is doing is (I assume) modifying chemicals in such a way that you can more readily do this.

Reply to
Austin Shackles

Did anyone read that story about the woman who is using the parts from a Boeing 747 to make a house? Sadly it's a house-looking house, she's not living in the plane (as I would, sitting feet-up on the dash smoking a pipe). Typically they managed to work "Native Americans" into it by comparing ripping apart a large airliner and building a multi-million pound house out of it, to the "recycling" that the amerinds did.

Please note that this post has been constructed from recycled star matter, just like the eskimos.

Reply to
Ian Rawlings

Better be careful with her landing lights then!!!

(Sorry - but soemone had to!)

Cheers

Peter

Reply to
puffernutter

You may jest, but the design had to make sure that the parts used for the house didn't resemble an aircraft crash from the air to prevent false alarm calls!

I wonder if she got to keep the emergency exit slides..

Reply to
Ian Rawlings

He doesn'SAY create energy, he says produce it, in the sense that a turbo-alternator "produces" energy. His new process manages to catalyse oil without farting about with adding extra heat, caustic etc. If it works its great, but it doesn't answer the question about where the hell we get all this veggie oil.

Steve

Reply to
Steve

On or around Fri, 21 Apr 2006 20:51:48 +0100, Steve enlightened us thusly:

yeah, but it's still the same terminological inexactitude, though. a machine converts energy into a form in which you can use it more readily, or stores energy in a manner in which renders it readily available.

What the bloke has made is a simple means by which to convert vegetable oil into engine fuel, and as such, the chances are it probably USES energy, although I've not looked at details.

Given a ready energy supply, you can make the energy do work.

Which doesn't mean that I disapprove of what's been done or that it's a bad idea or anything, just that especially a scientist should be more accurate in what he says, assuming that they were indeed his words.

Reply to
Austin Shackles

On or around Fri, 21 Apr 2006 08:19:50 +0100, "Olly R" enlightened us thusly:

local biodiesel lot are damn nigh as expensive as dino diesel, and haven't, as I could see, got enough capacity to supply meaningfully. I enquired about bulk, and got the impression that they weren't interested and that in any case it'd take about month to get it. Not much use if I want about 150l a week.

Reply to
Austin Shackles

Hi,

I'd like to ask a question about bio diesel.

I've been doing a bit of reading lately and found some interesting information about bio-diesel.

see

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I've also found a list of UK suppliers who are happy to sell the stuff if you don't want to make your own.

see

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What I'd lie to know is has anyone tried the stuff.

In theory it all sound really good. What with less nasty emissions and the price of diesel toping at a £1 a litre, bio-D seems attractive.

I'm seriously thinking about trying it and according to the above information, I should be safe as long as the fuel filters are changes regularly for the first few months.

Does anyone have experience of using Bio Diesel - particularly on a TDi engine?

thanks

G
Reply to
Gail

I've been vaguely experimenting for the last two months. My land rover is a 1997 300Tdi 110. I buy mine from a local supllier and just stick it in the tank. I started using small ratios of bio to regular diesel, and gradually increased the mixture. Just before the really cold weather I reckon I was running on 80% biodisel.

I added a cheap see-through fuel filter from Halfords just before the main filter in the engine bay. This filter is easy to change and cheaper than the main eingine filter. I've changed it twice in about 2000 miles.

Performance-wise, it feels fine (and these remarks are based on quite a short period of not very scientific testing!). The engine is definitely smoother and less clattery on biodiesel, but there's no loss of power once it's warmed up. When the weather's cold, and when I was running on 80% biodiesel, it took more cranking (5 or 6 seconds maybe) to start the engine, was a bit smokier to start with, and for the first mile or so the engine was reluctant to rev and was quite sluggish. However, I'm prepared to put up with that for the sake of cheaper and cleaner fuel.

What I don't know is a) What ratio of bio/regular diesel I should be using at MoT time. b) What, if any, the loong-tem effects on the engine will be.

The down side for me is that it takes a bit more organisation to run on bio (phone supplier, check that he's got some, arrange time to pick it up) and for the last month I've been too busy, and have ended up just filling up with regular diesel. It's also messy - I get it in 25 litre containers, so I need to decant it into small fuel cans and then into the tank, or get a friend to hold the funnel whilst I pour the whole thing into the tank. I always spill some, usually on my shoes! I hope that one of these days it'll be on sale with proper forecourts and pumps and the like!

hope some of that helps

Olly

Reply to
Olly R

My 110 2.5TD has been on (and off!) it for the last 6 months. I stopped using it during the winter as it was too thick and really reduced the top speed.

I have a heater (using the hot water from the heater circuit) but over the summer I will be fitting an electric pre-heater and the valves I need for a two tank system so that I can use veggie fuel all year round.

My local veggie fuel is 95p tax paid. The problem is that Customs & Excise don't consider veggie fuel to be bio-diesel and as such they don't get the 27p reduction in duty (daft or what!)

I'll keep you posted as I develop my system.

Cheers

Peter

Reply to
puffernutter

Some of the bio-diesel sellers I spoke to at the end of last year said that the 27p reduction may be scrapped, I'm not sure if the final decision came in yet as I kind of lost interest in bio-diesel since I stopped almost all of my driving.

Reply to
Ian Rawlings

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