Running Diesel cars on Vegatable Oil?

trap4

A friend of mine told me yesterday that a friend of his showed up at his house last week driving a '92 diesel car which he was running on vegetable oil. He said he was buying the vegetable oil in Lidl and using it without having converted his engine in any way. Unfortuantely my friend didn't get any more specifics, like make of car, how long he'd been doing it, etc.

Now I thought this was pure BS when I heard it but having Googled around the net today I've found lots of websites talking about how to do it. But not knowing anything about the mechanical side of motor cars I can't tell how authentic these sites are.

So, my question is, has anyone else tried or known someone who tried this? Does it really work?

Lenny

Saw this on the news
you have to mix the oil with deisal, because the oil is thick because its not hot(needs to be 180 to be fully liquid) but that would burn the pipes out, so it has to be mixed more deisal than oil,
Can't give much on what type of specs of cars

air

The car wont last long without an inline pre heater or a two tank system.
Most diesels can be converted, VW's and Merc's are especially easy.
Conversion kits are available.
Check out the following for further information:
http://www.eilishoils.com/
http://www.greasel.com/
http://www.journeytoforever.org/

Your buddy or whatever also needs to pay a few cent per litre to Brian to keep things cosher.

Fingalian

Howdy,
Check out http://www.eilishoils.com/
It should answer all your questions.

StonedParadoX

trap4 if your really serious about converting your car to veggie oil
leave me a msg and ill give u my dads home number he owns eilish oils

he runs his car on veggie oil he owns a small business and has some converted trucks and cars with the Cork county council

kestrel

oh this is brilliant! i didnt know you could do that! i've been putting off learning to drive because i feel guilty about the fumes.

is vegetable oil better for the environment? if so, by how much in comparision to unleaded, leaded and diesel? i'm so happy

Sarsfield

RTE TV news has just this minute done a short piece on new tax breaks for bio-fuels.

Good timing!

http://www.rte.ie/news/2005/0803/biofuels.html

StonedParadoX

dude its tax free too

yeah its much better for the enviorment it doesnt harm it ( i think ) best check the website or basically not ask me cuz im not all that clued in i should be though he runs the damned thing *sigh* this sounds so fake

xonencentral

My quick input,

Rudolf Diesel invented the diesel engine to run on vegatable oil for African country's to support crop production; SVO, (Solid Vegatable Oil) staright into the tank. Africa was warm enough not to have to heat it. They would grow 90% of their crops and 10% new rapeseed, etc to run the water pump with bio-diesel.

He was a genius of magnitude proportions.....

He was on his way to sell his engine to the UK in 1913 when he was asassinated. (He was German)

Go down to your local garage and buy a new diesel car, buy 20 bottles of crisp and dry, pour them into the tank and drive home.

Option 2: It gets cold, hmmm, must remove the wax (glycerine) from the vegatable oil (SVO) and I'm left with bio-diesel. (THats the bio-diesel production process, can be done at home with used chip fat oil), I'm not gonig to explain it here.

You can use 100% bio-deisel or mix it. In France all Diesel is 5% bio diesel at the pumps. (95% petro diesel/5%bio-diesel and there are going to 50/50)

The only thing you need to watch out for is that bio-diesel acts like a solvent, a lot of people have bad experiences when they first use it.

When you put bio-diesel into a car normally running petro-diesel, it cleans down the tank, fuel lines , etc of all contaminants and they clog the filter so you need a couple of filters for the first 3-4 weeks. A lot of people brake down after conversion but its not what they think.

Sorry for my butting in, but this is a subject I have researched for over 5 years now.

air

How would this effect a home user that wants to filter his/her own svo and/or home brew biodiesel?
Is it a carte blanche to work away & use it without fear of repercussions from the revenue should they pulll you over?

Also xone, AFAIK S.V.O. stands for straight vegetable oil, meant to distinguish it from processed vegetable oil (i.e. biodiesel).

StonedParadoX

"The only thing you need to watch out for is that bio-diesel acts like a solvent, a lot of people have bad experiences when they first use it.

When you put bio-diesel into a car normally running petro-diesel, it cleans down the tank, fuel lines , etc of all contaminants and they clog the filter so you need a couple of filters for the first 3-4 weeks. A lot of people brake down after conversion but its not what they think."

so right man

xonencentral

Sorry about the typo on SVO, (It was late) and we have something at work which is close.

Yes, as long as you don't transfer ownership to anyone else of your bio-diesel, chuck it in your car and work away.

air

http://www.revenue.ie/services/tax_info/vatrate/T01249.htm
Looks good to me

trap4

Wow, I can't believe my timing - I had no scoop on the Goverment announcement!

xonencentral would you be able to explain the process of producing your own bio-diesel at home? Or if its something you've been working on for 5 years perhaps you're going to starting a business around the ideas?

So, AFAICS, its a choice between -

1) SVO with an engine conversion, and
2) Biodiesel with no conversion

which means that my friend's friend is going to run into trouble during the cold of winter for sure, right?

Thanks for all the input on this topic. I'm completely new to all this and find it absolutely fascinating

air

You're friends will see problems much earlier than the winter, svo needs to be heated to 80-90 degrees C for any sort of modern engine.
My own preference would be for SVO with the engine conversion unless you like to change your car regularly.
Less hassle / equipment needed, all you need to do is filter it, let the engine pre heat & away you go.

pan

So now that tax and duty is gone
Does that only mean at the pumps or will the 1ltr of veg oil in Lidi come down in price by the VAT amount?
The last time a looked 1ltr of veg oil was about €0.80 cents

trap4

Are we sure about the absense of tax and duty lads? I've just joined the Yahoo! Group for this website - http://www.veggiepower.org.uk/page701.htm - and received this by way of welcome -

"Anyone using vegoil in the UK must understand you must pay tax, not
doing so is ILLEGAL. Talking about using oil here is just as accessible
to the customs men as anyone else, you will be found out, if not here by
the smell coming from your car's exhaust pipe! The use of new oil is
frouned upon, so is mixing with white spirit."

air

Just as well we're not in the UK then.
Pan, I think Oil can be bought for around 60c /litre.
Eilish oils were selling 1000litres for 63c a litre, not sure if this included duty / vat or not.
The website hasnt been updated since the announcement in any case.
Perhaps SP could update us on any pricing changes that may / may not be ahead?

xonencentral

I sent them an email an they said that they believe its exemptions granted to to specific projects of which some have been reported on the TV of late, but they are not sure as info is light at the moment.

I heard that UK issue in Top Gear regarding use of bio-diesel but I believe in Ireland duty is only aplicable on sale or transfer ?

Maybe we should let this sleeping dog lie ?

trap4

For anyone interested in coverting the straight vegetable oil (SVO) into Biodiesel I found an excellent video on a website by a guy who processes it in his own shed -

http://biolyle.com/

ednwireland

Is it possible to run a home oil boiler on biodiesel obviusly the prices are similiar at the moment (but i guess its not getting any cheaper and i can't afford a wood chip boiler) but would it be possible without your house smelling like a chipper ?

air

Yep, any home boiler can run on biodiesel.
Anything that will run on diesel / kerosene or whatever will run on biodiesel.

alias no.9

Before anybody runs out anc chucks straight or waste veggie oil into their car there are a number of risks;

If you have a Lucas injector pump, forget about it, the pump will seize and it will cost you up to €1000to replace.

If you have a common rail (JTD by Fiat/Alfa, HDI by Peugeot/Citroen, TDCI by ford/mazda/jaguar, DCi by Renault/Nissan, CDTI by opel/vauxhall, CDI by Mercedes, D by BMW) or Pumpe Deuse (by VW/Audi/Seat) engine, then forget about it too, it is untried and the injector nozzles will be destroyed using such a high viscosity fuel and boy are they pricy to replace.

If you have a bosch distributer type pump with electronic control, it will reek havoc with the sensors in the pump and you will get various engine management faults being registered, you'll see the engine management light come on on the dash quick enough.

If you have a bosch distributer type pump with mechanical control, you really need to preheat the oil to about 80C - 90C to reduce the viscosity enough to prevent damage, this can be done using an electrical heater running off the battery or using a heat exchanger running off the engine coolant. It is recommended to use a two tank system where you can start up on regular diesel and swich over when the engine is up to temperature ie the heat exchanger is operational.

If you have a bosch inline injector pump then you're laughing. Unfortunately, they're rarely found on anything except old mercedes. You're only concern is gelling of the fuel in winter.

air

I think it's a bit more positive than that regarding conversions, most diesels have been successfully converted at this stage, although I accept the point about the Lucas pumps.
http://www.greasel.com/Vehicle.html

alias no.9

air wrote:

I think it's a bit more positive than that regarding conversions, most diesels have been successfully converted at this stage, although I accept the point about the Lucas pumps.
http://www.greasel.com/Vehicle.html

There are many older engines that can be converted easily, their design is crude and they have a lot of margin of error. Diesel technology has advanced sciesmicly in europe over the past 7 years or so, injector designs are much more sophisticated, the US, where that site is based has not fully caught up yet. On common rail and pumpe deuse engines, the injector nozzles are extremely expensive and have very small appertures and run at very high pressures to create a very fine spray into the cylinder. If you introduce a fuel that has a much higher viscosity than the engine is designed for you will be commiting financial suicide. Elsbett in germany are the world leaders in converting diesels to run on veg, they don't even venture into the world of common rail or pumpe deuse, they stick mostly to older indirect injection engines and some older direct injection engines like the non pumpe deuse versions of VW's TDI's and renaults DTi's. Trust me on this one, I've done a lot of research and some experimentation.

air

Point taken, I had reads so many references to VW TDI's that I had forgotten that they don't even sell PD diesels in the states.

CJhaughey

The main reason is that US diesel is some of the worst quality diesel in the world, high in sulphur and very poor quality.

air

That makes a lot of sense CJ & I have seen references to Europe's low sulphur diesel.
I guess there just isnt the demand for diesel in the US, I think I read somewhere that less than 1% of their cars use it as opposed to around 30% in Europe.
Apparently even many of their large trucks run on "gas" (petrol).
Many of them are amazed by gimicks like the prius giving 50ish mpg on long runs when something like a toyota corolla diesel can give 62ish mpg when driven gently.
(Disclaimer: the prius may be useful if you do all your driving in a city )

Mailman

Apart from the Merc diesels like the 190D what other models of car run reasonably well without modification on SVO.

I'm thinking simple old diesels Like the TD engine used in the Escort or the 1.4/1.5 litre block in the Citroen Saxo might be simple enough to run with SVO.

mike65

Check this out

http://www.farmersjournal.ie/2005/0702/farmmanagement/crops/feature.shtml

the company featured has started selling diesel at 70 cent a litre to the public according to WLR-FM this morning.

Mike.

Takeshi_Kovacs

has anyone got any experience with actual production of biodiesel,
i have read up a lot of it and it doesn't seem that hard to make (although the chemicals used are pretty nasty..)
more importantly , does anyone know where i can buy Methanol (one of those nasty chemicals) by the 20 litre+ at a reasonable price?

alias no.9

Most Indirect Injection engines can be converted to run on straight vegetable oil or waste vegetable oil provided they have mechanical bosch injector pump. The best conversion is a two tank system where you have a small tank for ordinary diesel for starting up and shutting down. When the engine is up to temperature, coolant from the engine can be used in a heat exchanger to preheat the veg oil to reduce it's viscosity using a 3 way valve to switch the fuel supply to the pump from derv to veg and putting the return straight to the pump. It's probably wise to heat the oil before passing it through the fuel filter, some fuel filters have adhesives that melt at relatively low temperatures so it's probably best to get one designed as a heated filter, these are common on peugeots/citroens and some fiats. Another consideration is your fuel tank, if it has a coating or is paintedon the inside, veg oil may dissolve this causing the filter to clog up quickly, this is a particular problem on rover cars using peugeots 1.8 diesel engine.

Production of biodiesel is a much more costly and messy. It is also quite wasteful and as such not as environmentally sound as it may seem at first. If efforts were concentrated on designing injector pumps to handle higher viscosity fluids, straight vegetable oil would be the best solution.

Takeshi_Kovacs

alias no.9 wrote:

Production of biodiesel is a much more costly and messy. It is also quite wasteful and as such not as environmentally sound as it may seem at first. If efforts were concentrated on designing injector pumps to handle higher viscosity fluids, straight vegetable oil would be the best solution.

yes the use of straight veg oil would be the most desirable way to go, but for the millions of older diesels out there, biodiesel is a much better option..

Sarsfield

There was an interesting article in yesterdays Sunday Business Post on the subject.

Sunday Business Post Article

Of particular interest is a proposal to build a biofuel factory in Carlow, using sugar beet as the raw material. In the light of the impending collapse of the sugar industry in Ireland, this should have the attention of the Dept. of Agriculture & IFA.

alias no.9

Takeshi_Kovacs wrote:

yes the use of straight veg oil would be the most desirable way to go, but for the millions of older diesels out there, biodiesel is a much better option..

On the contrary, older diesels, particularly indirect injection or swirl chamber type engines, common across all marques up until the late 1990's are ideal for conversion to SVO provided they have bosch injector pumps. DIY conversions are not difficult but off the shelf conversion kits are also available from Elsbett in germany. Newer common rail and pumpe deuse type direct injection diesels are not suited to SVO because they operate at much higher pressures and within much finer tolerances so the high viscosity of veg oil will mean certain death for the injection system.

CJhaughey

I have just looked into the economics of fitting a Elsbett system and was quoted a figure of €950.00 including postage.
The payback time based on my current usage and Diesel @ 109cent per litre is about 32 weeks.
I had a look at the system and it looks as though you get a fairly simple system a heat exchanger, modified injectors and glow plugs and a handful of electrical gubbins, relays etc.
I may think about doing it myself.

kleefarr

trap4 wrote:

you will be found out, if not here by
the smell coming from your car's exhaust pipe!

Anyone know what the exhaust smells like? Just out of interest.

dr strangelove

smells like chips........ really

air

Takeshi_Kovacs wrote:

does anyone know where i can buy Methanol (one of those nasty chemicals) by the 20 litre+ at a reasonable price?

According to this thread on the biodiesel now forums you can buy it from Corcoran Chemicals in Dublin for €110 + vat per 55 gal. drum (01-6778163).

This is about 200 litres, so your methanol would be costing you about 66 cents per litre including VAT.
I have a vague notion that you will need about 1 part methanol for every 5 parts finished biodiesel, so your costs should be about 13.2 cents per litre of finished fuel assuming you can get your oil for nothing (which should be easy enough).

You will also however have to deal with the disposal of the glycerol generated in the production of the biodiesel.

With the latest tax breaks then, am I correct in thinking that a home user can just make the fuel and use it away without fear of prosecution or does one need to be registered etc?

kleefarr

dr strangelove wrote:

smells like chips........ really

Not surprising I suppose!

GreenHell

You make a petrol out of some wheat crop as well. Its being tested over in wexford I believe.

kleefarr

Anyone tried potcheen?

Takeshi_Kovacs

air wrote:

According to this thread on the biodiesel now forums you can buy it from Corcoran Chemicals in Dublin for €110 + vat per 55 gal. drum (01-6778163).

This is about 200 litres, so your methanol would be costing you about 66 cents per litre including VAT.
I have a vague notion that you will need about 1 part methanol for every 5 parts finished biodiesel, so your costs should be about 13.2 cents per litre of finished fuel assuming you can get your oil for nothing (which should be easy enough).

You will also however have to deal with the disposal of the glycerol generated in the production of the biodiesel.

With the latest tax breaks then, am I correct in thinking that a home user can just make the fuel and use it away without fear of prosecution or does one need to be registered etc?

thanks for the link, i will check up on this crowd, see what the story is... also find out how much delivery would be, if they deliver..
on the cost of the finished product, it might be lower.. first off 55 gallons = around 250 L , therefore you are looking at around 53 cent a litre for the methanol (excluding delivery costs e.t.c.)

Now what you said about the 5:1 ratio of veg oil and meth is correct, in that this is the most widely used ratio because you need an excess of methanol to drive the reaction towards biodiesel and glycerin as the finished product.

But from what i have read, only 12.5 % methanol is used up in the reaction itself, therefore most homebrewers recover the excess methanol (by distilling) to bring cost down even more .
Now if you succesfully recover all or most of the meth, then you are looking at ratio of 8:1 (oil to meth).
Therefore assumin all goes right for ye, and you get reasonably clean chipper oil for free, then you are looking at cost of round 7 to 8 cent a litre of biodiesel, (which to me sounds riduculously low, so feel free to point out any and all mistake with the math)
Even still, if you had to use virgin oil (at around 62 cent a litre in lidl, aldi ), your finished product would still only cost around 70 cent a litre.

Note: I am excluding all other costs such as cost of the caustic soda, heating of oil to reaction temp, blue barrels for storing the stuff in e.t.c. (also this also relies on the quote of the meth from corcoran chemicals as being correct) , but still seems a lot cheaper than paying upwards of 1.10 euro and rising, a litre....

mike65

Sarsfield wrote:

Sunday Business Post Article

Of particular interest is a proposal to build a biofuel factory in Carlow, using sugar beet as the raw material. In the light of the impending collapse of the sugar industry in Ireland, this should have the attention of the Dept. of Agriculture & IFA.

Its great that the papers read boards.ie for ideas!

Mike.

ps my opening line shows just how fast oil prices are moving.

trap4

This discussion has thrown up some excellent information - thanks to all. In an effort to organise it I've setup a Wiki at

http://fresheir.wikispaces.org/

and everyone is welcome to contribute. I'm not trying to re-invent the wheel becauser there is already a huge amount of information on the web but I've found nowhere that condenses the information specific to the production of Biodiesel in this country.


QUESTION
========
Has anyone investigated the sourcing of waste vegetable oil? What are most chippers and restaurants in Ireland currently doing? Are they paying people to dispose of it?




~~~~~~~~
-Jim.
http://eirepreneur.blogs.com/fresheir/

Takeshi_Kovacs

trap4 wrote:

This discussion has thrown up some excellent information - thanks to all. In an effort to organise it I've setup a Wiki at

http://fresheir.wikispaces.org/

and everyone is welcome to contribute. I'm not trying to re-invent the wheel becauser there is already a huge amount of information on the web but I've found nowhere that condenses the information specific to the production of Biodiesel in this country.


QUESTION
========
Has anyone investigated the sourcing of waste vegetable oil? What are most chippers and restaurants in Ireland currently doing? Are they paying people to dispose of it?




~~~~~~~~
-Jim.
http://eirepreneur.blogs.com/fresheir/

good idea on the wiki

i'm not sure about all chippers , restaurants, e.t.c., but a good few of them dump it, not sure how or where, i know there is a fella collecting waste oil from restaurants in the mid kerry area alright , but i am not sure what he does with it...

Sarsfield

mike65 wrote:

Its great that the papers read boards.ie for ideas!

T'would be even better if the minister read boards too. This is a populist government (the FF bit anyway). If this thread gets enough posts it might result in a policy

air

I heard on national radio that they were having trouble with a new waste water treatment system in Galway city due to restaurants pouring used oil down the sink.
The oil was combining with hair and causing serious blockages.

Also on that science show with Richard Hammond on BBC, he went into the sewers in London one night & there was a massive crust on top of the flow which was basically decaying oil. It causes massive problems for them there too.

However I have seen waste oil wheelie bins outside some large restaurants etc & I think there are companies that actually filter the oil and return it to restaurants for reuse.

Incidentially the main feature of the BBC program was how unhealthy partially hydrogenated oils are when used for deep frying. The gist of the episode was that pure plant oils like rapeseed etc are infinitely better for you.

air

Takeshi_Kovacs wrote:

first off 55 gallons = around 250 L

Google apparently uses US gallons by default in its conversion, 55 Imperial gallons is indeed 250L. I would assume that they would be using imperial measurements.

Saruman

I saw this on tomorrows world when i was a kid. Back in the early 90's i would say. A guy in britain modified his diesel car to run off oil. He used to go around the chippers and take their waste oil off them, i assume clean it and fill up his tank.

Only downside was his car smelled like a chipper

Would love to have one.. im sick like everyone else of oil prices and of course the environmental issues that go with fossil fuels.

Redneck_Rebel

kleefarr wrote:

Anyone tried potcheen?

When I was at silage the boss had "a number" of bottles fcuk me that stuff would give your engine a bit of a kick. I was only sipping it and I could feel it going all the way down.
On the veg oil, I'd hold off on using that til I see some reliability specs. It could be like using unleaded petrol in leaded engines, fine til you drive on or go long distance. It would be fine to get an old E200 car and run that for year to see what happens. You are talking big money to repair new cars with all the electronics + crap and I don't think when you went to the garage with a claped engine smelling of chips saying I tried to save the envioment they would honer the warrenty.