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Many old diesels will run quite happily on a mix of diesel and vegetable oil.
I've been running my UK cars on it for years, with no noticeable change in performace or economy.
I also have done nothing whatsoever to convert them. Simply pour it in.
About 50/50.
I've run my old Ford at 90% veg oil in summer, and it was fine.
It is a little thicker, so reduce the mix in winter, or add a little ethanol.
With a litre of diesel here costing about $2.50, and veg oil at around $1.50, you do the math !
Only problems is that although the diesel engine was originally designed to run on it, today's engine's aren't.
Diesel has some lubricating properties, and some diesel injection pumps will wear out much quicker.
These are not cheap to replace.
Yes, the exhaust gas smells like fried food, but if your engine is running efficiently, it really isn't too bad.
If you fit a seperate tank, and some sort of fuel heater, then you don't really need to worry about anything.
Corn oil (which is probably the most common waste fryer oil), soy, peanut, canola, rapeseed (whatever that is) among other oils can be used. My understanding is that they clean better and lubricate at least as well as petrolium diesel, especially the "ultra low sulfur" stuff available now. The only thing is they thicken up in low temperatures. There are a number of ways to address that. One is to run a heater to heat the oil before it goes into the fuel line, and/or run conventional petrolium diesel at startup. The other is to convert the veggie oil into bio diesel. I understand the process is pretty straight forward. A catalyis is added to the veggie oil to seperate out glycerine, which is what causes the fuel to thicken (again, as I understand it anyway). Glycerine is a viable commercial chemical.
I hope I didn't come across as scarastic in the other post. My questioning why involves the amount of waste oil available. How much waste oil does a resturant produce? 5 gallons a week or so? If you figure 20 gallons of fuel per week per vehicle, you use the output of 4 resturants just for one rig. So it doesn't go very far towards solving our energy problem.
I don't know alot about the economic viability of "virgin" biodiesel. In '08 when diesel prices broke $5.00 a gallon a lot of biodiesel plants were being planned or built, but I don't know how many were finished or how much b-diesel is available. I haven't seen any stations around me advertising it. But I'm not looking anymore, traded off the diesel a few months ago. From what I understand, biodiesel is much more viable than ethanol. Ethanol requires alot of energy in it's production to boil and distill the alcohol (above and beyond the cost of growing, harvesting and transplanting the corn). BDiesel just requires crushing/pressing the seed to collect the oil, then the seperation of glycerine. Still, it would take a lot of acerage currently used for food crops to produce the seeds for the oil.
The lye and heat (from a household water heater) is the catalyst and the methanol is an additive to increase the octane to keep the motor from knocking.
Quote:
Extreme caution should be used when handling methanol, lye, and the resulting mixture, sodium methoxide. I use a face shield, long gloves, and full coverage clothing when performing this operation. Again, this is not an instruction manual, but rather an overview of the process. Refer to the listed resources for more info.
The show is retarded. They have it geared up to look that way, they pick the weirdest people they can find to make it interesting but even still the show is crappily produced. Nat'l Geo is down the crapper.
Of course you could grab some family off the street and put them in a disaster scenario. Make them go two weeks in the house and not be allowed to leave and have the power turned off. See how they'd manage with NO preparedness.
I just watched a show on "preppers" who use used fryer oil in their cars. I don't know how this works, but, it seems like average americans (by that I mean of average intellegence) can transform their cars and fry oil into usable "gas". Is it something that is so out there? These people saved reasources and money; and used something that we have alot of. Just, wanted to know if someone could helpl me understand why if this is possible what the problem is. Is it environmentally more unsound than other sources?
You cannot run a gas-powered car on Waste Vegetable Oil (WVO), but you can easily run diesels on it. And many people do.
This is a fascinating pocket industry, and has a huge cult following. It's pretty cool.
There are three main problems with burning WVO through diesels. Number one, is the cost of the conversion kit. It typically runs well over $1,000. Number two, is that it's messy. Number three, is that there's not enough WVO to go around.
Fact is, however, that bio-diesel is becoming more and more mainstream for use in diesel vehicles. It has some solid value!
[quote=BigJon3475;23429596]The lye and heat (from a household water heater) is the catalyst and the methanol is an additive to increase the octane to keep the motor from knocking. [/quote]
diesel does NOT have an octane number, it has a cetane number which tells you how easy it lights off. the higher the cetane number the easier the diesel lights off, which makes it better for winter operation.
remember that diesels run on controlled detonation, and not a spark ignition like gas engines do.
Who the heck has "a lot" of fryer oil laying around. I mean, how much fried food are you eating??? Yuck!
Just came across this article. Who'd a thunk it??? Couldn't stomach to read the whole thing, but I think its relevant to this thread! YUCK!
"Slick-fingered Bay Area thieves are stealing restaurants' used kitchen grease, a product that six years ago was so worthless that some restaurant owners would illegally dump it down the drain instead of paying for proper disposal."
"The leftover cooking oil, yellow grease, is the easiest material to turn into biodiesel."
Read more: Used kitchen grease is thieves' latest target (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/03/15/BA051NFA8F.DTL#ixzz1pKm6g4Vz - broken link) Used kitchen grease is thieves' latest target
I am hearing a lot about people preparing for some sort of "Doomsday" or catastrophic event by the end of the year.
Anybody here preparing for such an event?
If you are, what do you expect will happen and what exactly are you doing to prepare for this?
What exactly makes you believe a catastrophic event will happen?
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Any Doomsday Preppers out there?
