Biofuel

[kandrathe]

On the first one I saw on Spike TV's trucks they put the used oil through multiple steps in what looked to me like some kind of white plastic cement mixer. It went through a few differents steps including I believe methanol added to it. I think they made about 20 gallons and has a quart of two of waiste product at the end that you had to dispose of. This bio-fuel could go right in your tank with no worries or conversions and it ran cleaner than the normal diesel fuel. There was some company selling the equipment and all the chemical to do it yourself in your garage.

This sounds like the process to make true bio-diesel. The only tricky part is titration of the WVO to determine the level of FFA (free fatty acids) which determines the amount of NOAH to add to convert the FFA's into soap. Methanol seems to be 1 part per 8 parts oil (about 12.5%).

Here is a kit company

The second show had a conversion they ran that let you switch between the diesel and the bio-fuel. You have to run the diesel long enough to heat up the second tank of waiste oil hot enough to be able to run in their engine. This reminded me of the very low grade oil they run big commerical ships on. It is like sludge but had to be heated up before it can be sprayed into the engines. This conversion was between two and three thousand dollars.

The use of duel tanks is because the WVO is hard to start an engine with, so once the engine is hot enough the WVO will burn like petro-diesel. But WVO can also have a high water content, and the result is a heavily damaged and corroded engine. At the very least, I would recommend filtering and heating the WVO to remove the water. There are some engine modifications needed to burn SVO or WVO directly.

Three German companies who make the conversion kit are;

• Elsbett Technologie<>
  
• Vereinigte Werkstätten für Pflanzenöltechnologie<>
  
• WOLF Pflanzenöltechnik<>
  [st]
  SVO (soy,rapeseed. or other vegetable oil) does not have the same water or corrosion problem, but then, you are wasting our food (or the arable land that could produce food) by burning it as fuel thus driving up the cost of food. Then again, the food/fuel debate might also include feeding grains to animals for furs or meat, the tendency for many people to eat more than they need, the amount of food which is wasted or thrown away, but again, that is an entirely different debate. Rapeseed is a great winter cover crop with nitrogen fixation, so for some farms it might provide a good 2nd rotation crop.