Am thinking of making my own and running my van on some homemade bio diesel and wondered if any of you clever buggers could help with good websites that pertain to N.Z. I would dearly love to talk to people who are using bio diesel also. What are your recipes! Thanks
mrfxit,
Mar 23, 3:48pm
Very much depends on the model & year of the diesel vehicle. Also. How soon you want the pure fuel or can wait for a few turns in the centrifuge. Treating waste engine oil is very different to treating cooking oilbut mostly if you want the purity high & you have a fairly unforgiving good condition motor.
DON'T do it if you have a common rail engine. Home made biodiesel will screw up the injector tolerances etc. (1K each to about 3K each injector depending on model & those have a real potential to screw the motors as well when the injectors die.)
The most talked about units are heated & run at 3000rpm & clean the waste oil in 1 pass through, but you are looking a few K's worth of $$$.
singing1,
Mar 23, 4:14pm
Motor is 3l Toyota so does that make a difference!
morrisman1,
Mar 23, 4:30pm
There are some critical factors for making proper biodiesel
~ only ever use vege oil, never use lard. Never us anything that isn't liquid when stored in the fridge ~ It is very important that the oil is dry when you process it. To do this you can heat the oil to around 80°C for long enough to be sure it is dry. If you heat it above 100 then you risk a steam explosion and hot oil everywhere. If you dont dry your oil you risk making soap which will be suspended in the biodiesel and will wreck your pump and injectors ~ It is very important that you are accurate with your calculations and working out how much lye to add to the methanol. This way you should get a complete reaction and will leave little unreacted material in which will degrade the quality of the fuel. ~ All the glycerine needs to be drained off the bottom. If you get a good reaction there will be a very clear and consistent line between the layer of biodiesel and glycerine
In the vehicle it is important that your pump can handle the extra load that the fuel will place on it. Piston style pumps are the best but the VE style rotary pump is also good. You will need a second inline filter with water trap and if you can have it pre-heating the fuel slightly. Some cars will have this preheating function already like my peugeot diesel did. A filter off a truck or tractor is best, the more surface area the better as you wont want the pump to have to struggle to pull the fuel through.
And as said if you have commonrail engine then forget about it and just buy pump diesel as the risks are not worth it.
morrisman1,
Mar 23, 4:39pm
The best way to filter the oil before you process it is definetely a large capacity centrifuge. One that is suitable for getting visible particles out. Saves the remainder of the system clogging up with debris. The fine particles will come out with the glycerine and any remaining will be caught in any of the three minimum filters it passes through before it gets to the injector pump.
Some other handy pointers are: ~ for your pump use one that is a gear type pump, not relying on centrifical force as these dont work well with the higher viscosity. The corrosive chemicals are hard on components so the more that are brass or stainless the better. Hansen fitting have proven to stand up well.
~ I havnt found a good hose yet. I used some orange fuel transfer hose but it doesnt like the alcohol content and although hasnt failed it looks knarly in places.
~ Use superheater elements on thermostats for heating oil. Just weld a pipe fitting to the drum or barrel to screw it into.
~ use a mechanical stirring device, you can get much better circulation with that. It doesnt need to be fast as long as it is able to stir the entire batch effectively while it is reacting. I used a pump for stirring but it was trouble at times.
~ for safety! Keep fire extinguishers handy, a spill kit handy and remove sources of ignition. This includes motors that have brushes in them - use induction motors.
I actually have my biodiesel plant for sale if anyone wants to get into it. It is Invercargill, that is the only catch!
intrade,
Mar 23, 4:41pm
i advise against any vegetable oils and there likes its to hard to do and you cant mix vegetable oils with mineral waste oils it goes solid in the tank as some moron on youtube found out. I do not use wvo as it binds water. i only run Wmo and had my hilux run 100% Wmo . my shitty lucas pump dont likes more then 60% wmo on my fiat diesel , also cleaning oil there is only 1 solution to do so and its acentrifuge if you dont want to invest 2 grand in a centrifuge i recommend you forget about it all togather right now as you will brake down sooner then you wishif the fuel is not propperly cleaned first.
morrisman1,
Mar 23, 4:54pm
You should tell Europe they are doing it wrong Intrade.
intrade,
Mar 23, 5:01pm
They cant use wmo on the road in europe it would fail the emission test as it smokes quite some till the fuel gets warmed up and it wont run below 16 degreecelcius on 100%wmo that are my findings. I usually mix it with diesel to make it flow better already when i whack it thru the centrifuge 10 liter in 20 minutesmy system processes and it cant be more easy.
morrisman1,
Mar 23, 5:07pm
I was running 100% biodiesel down to -6°C with no extra preheating. Only once did I have an issue where the inline filter clogged up. It was too small for the application.
No extra smoke with biodiesel, engine runs smoother and smells great!
intrade,
Mar 23, 5:08pm
yea and i recall you replaced a poked diesel pump.
morrisman1,
Mar 23, 5:20pm
The diesel pump never failed, it was just a worn front seal let in air and prevented the pump from drawing fuel from the tank and hence wouldnt run.
Disassembly revealed that there was wear on the main shaft that would have meant even a new seal may have not sealed properly and hence the pump was replaced. New pump has done about 50,000km since.
Whether that failure would have occurred on normal diesel or not, I dont know. Probably wouldn't of because the alcohol in the biodiesel could have been the straw to break the camels back on the old front shaft seal.
I know that the internals of that 'failed' pump were good as gold
singing1,
Mar 23, 5:25pm
Do you still have to pay RUC's if using Bio!
intrade,
Mar 23, 5:28pm
of course you have to pay road user charge as diesel is suposedly not taxed at the pump. if it was then you would have to pay tax on the boiodiesel on top of it
So.ifi have a petrol engine vehicle running on Bio I dont have to pay RUC's!Im just asking.
intrade,
Mar 23, 5:35pm
how are you going to run a petrol on bio! and what do you mean with bio Do you want to run your petrol engine on snaps like the mexicans! you cant run a petrol engine on oil. diesel are oilburners petrol engines are not so i dont quite get you here
singing1,
Mar 23, 5:39pm
Interesting. I know bugger all about what runs on bio and what doesn't that's why I'm asking. Many years ago I did run my old bomb (petrol engine) on half diesel and half petrol. She smoked and pinked a bit but was pretty cheap to run.
mrfxit,
Mar 23, 5:40pm
Bio-petrol & bio-Diesel are 2 totally different fuels for totally different engines
morrisman1,
Mar 23, 5:42pm
an option for a petrol is to run it on e85 if you can brew your own ethanol. The car will need to be retuned for the different fuel and any rubber component of the fuel system replaced with something alcohol compatible. The stock fuel pump may need upgraded and the lines too so that it can keep up with the extra flow. The injectors definetely would need to be swapped out.
So yes it can be done but only for the enthusiasts and not the average soccer mum
singing1,
Mar 23, 5:44pm
I'm asking about alternatives to diesel like waste oil, vege oil or anything else that might be cheap to get, that might go bang in a motor and alternatives for petrol engined car for that matter.
intrade,
Mar 23, 5:54pm
for petrol engines you can use alcohol or you can run em on firewood, but both things are not easy done Diesel run any oil solong as you got no water in the oil and it is liquid enough. New diesel like commonrail would however not like to run on just any old oil as they got extensive emission divises that would get stuffed in the process. Also you cant run anything else then a carburettor engine on firewood. its called Wood-gas and was used in worldwar2 . Mexico runs alcohol on there cars since years, carburettor need special nozzles for that and some new cars you can buy now who can run on ethanol as the alcohol is calledthat can not be drunk and is close to 100% so 42% burbon wont run them cars
singing1,
Mar 23, 6:03pm
Hey thanks guys. I think that sometimes we do get sucked into thinking we must only use what the "big boys" tell us so am really keen to see what else comes up in this thread. I remember some goon on TV a few years ago claiming his bike ran on water but Ive never been able to start a fire with water so reckon that story is well dead by now.
mrfxit,
Mar 23, 6:14pm
In reality, you would be running off the 'byproducts" of what we call water, (namely hydrogen & oxygen split). The splitting process is currently expensive, might get a lot cheaper, probably not.
singing1,
Mar 23, 6:17pm
Yes I get that but hey, like you say, its a fair way off yet.
intrade,
Mar 23, 6:38pm
there is hidrogen but that guy on tv would have been a frawdster as for example a perpetomobile dont exist either all energy comes from somewhere and a internal combustion engine is one of the most inefficient things ever that was made over 100 year ago other engines have been made and vanished fast as they would have used a fraction of fuel in the 1950s. there was a guy who had one running on tv also but greed prevents things like this from taking off.
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