Posted on 04/30/2005 6:10:42 AM PDT by grania
Diesel engines can run on just about anything, including used cooking oil. An entire industry is emerging to provide brave 'biodiesel' pioneers with the ingredients for petroleum-free motoring.
One day last March, my musician friend Jonathan drove up in a Mercedes. This was odd, since Jonathan is so resolutely counterculture that he once tried recording an album in the woods, without electricity.
His car's exhaust smelled faintly of french fries, and therein lay the explanation: The new Jonathan Richman tour vehicle -- an '84 300D Turbo -- was running on vegetable oil-derived biodiesel fuel as he and his drummer crisscrossed the nation in it, a deep fryer on wheels.
I was intrigued: Biodiesel comes from renewable resources. It's made from soybeans, corn or other oil crops, saving America's farmers. Or it comes from recycled kitchen grease, saving America's sewers. It pollutes remarkably less than petroleum fuel, and could potentially make the U.S. energy self-sufficient, freed from bargaining with dictators and terror-sponsor states.
And did I mention it smells like french fries?
But I was also suspicious. If it works so well, why isn't everyone already using it? I've fallen prey to New Age wishful thinking before, and that pyramid never did sharpen my razor. Even after cruising the Pacific Coast Highway in Jonathan's car, something about it didn't seem real. If a car runs on vegetable oil, does that mean I can run my TV on sauerkraut? Don't let retirement sneak up on you. Create a perfect plan.
Endorsed by Rudolf Diesel himself It turns out biodiesel is not a new idea. When Rudolf Diesel introduced his signature engine at the 1900 Paris Exposition, he said two words as he started it: "Peanut oil." He'd designed his engine so farmers could grow their own fuel. Most diesel engines were indeed run on vegetable oil until the 1920s, when the petroleum industry promoted a gasoline byproduct as diesel fuel.
Environmental concerns, the Iraq war and rising gas prices have spurred a renewed interest in biodiesel, and people have discovered that a diesel automobile can run on it with little or no alteration. (Cars more than a decade old should have fuel lines checked, because the highly solvent fuel eats some rubber compounds. It cleans engines so effectively that fuel filters also bear watching.) It can be used interchangeably with standard diesel fuel, and it's had well over a million miles of road-testing.
I started seriously thinking about joining the biodiesel generation when a butterscotch Mercedes 240D turned up for sale around the corner for $3,500. Saving the environment is nice, but I really like butterscotch. Test-driving the car, however, I found that friends' concerns about the model's 67-horsepower engine proved true. The 240D has a reputation for running forever, but that's also apparently how long it takes to get anywhere in it.
The biggest hurdle: where to tank up Even if this wasn't the diesel steed for our experiment in vehicular unction, I was now set on getting one. My wife expressed doubts about the biodiesel lifestyle, though, when I suggested we could store the 55-gallon drum in the bushes near the garage.
Here's link to a press to extract oil from seed crops.
http://www.oilpress.com/typ40a.htm
The price is around $3,000 in Sweden. That's one of the smaller units.
If you pay attention to the difficulty trying to get energy legislation through Congress, I think you will conclude that it is politics that gets in the way of implementing new solutions to energy needs. Proposals for wind, algae in deserts, and Anwar shift major economic power from populous NE blue states to less populated red states. Therefore, they cannot get approved. Ethanol and biodeisel do not have retail distribution systems and that is all tied up now in the boutique formulations demanded by the EPA. The problem is government, not the oil companies. The later are all invested in R&D for alternatives.
I use vegetable oil to clean off car engine grease and
"yecch" from my hands while working around the engine of
my car... like they said in chemistry class...
"like dissolves like"...
I use vegetable oil to clean off car engine grease and
"yecch" from my hands while working around the engine of
my car... like they said in chemistry class...
"like dissolves like"...
Use vegetable oils as fuel; eat only natural animal fats! Solve the Middle East problem and the national health crisis all in one fell swoop. Not a bad idea.
Not to mention the benefit to our economy by keeping all those TRILLIONS here, rather than sending them to the camel drivers to kill us with.
That is not a problem. Diesel engines are typically fitted with a heating unit for cold weather starting, one can also go in the fuel.
With dual tanks, you could start the engine on biodiesel; when the engine is warm, you switch to a vegoil tank. The vegoil has to be heated until it is liquid enough to squirt through the injectors.
Many Bambi's have been through my meat grinder... :o)
They'd bitch. They would. I know it. It's not about conservation, it's not about the environment, it's about people having control over their lives.
What would they bitch about? Well, that's simple. They'd show some African kid, probably in Zimbabwe, who didn't have enough food, and then would say that if we all drove 10% less or something, we could feed all those kids. They'd bitch because driving would now somehow deprive third worlders of food. Or prices of corn and soybeans would increase, and this would be hard on the third world and domestic poor people. Mark my words, they'll bitch about it. That's all they do.
Using SVO and the two tank method is ok for warmer climates, but a pain in the @ss and just not practical in colder ones. Coking is always a problem, and it only needs to happen ONCE and you'd never, ever try that again!.
Plus, you just don't get as much power using straight SVO, you're burning up the bad stuff as well.
All around, prcessing the veggie oil into pure BIO-diesel is the best way to go, requires none of this two tank nonsense and requires no modifications to any diesel engine, other than making sure there is no rubber in the fuel system.
Even bio- diesel has low temp starting troubles when it gets more than 10 degrees below freezing, but at least you don't have to worry about gumming up the whole engine, which results in a complete tear down.(Expensive if your not mechanicly inclined)
Try running this stuff in Northern MN, the Dakotas or the UP between September 15 and March 30.
There are already pour and cloud depressants for diesel fuel. No doubt an additive will be developed to get this stuff to flow at 20 below, too.
There is, it's called winter diesel, LoL! Just mix it half and half with Bio diesel and there's no winter problems.
I didn't catch that Jonathon Richman was mentioned, that it's his vehicle using bio diesel. Roadrunner, roadrunner
Going faster miles an hour
Gonna drive past the Stop 'n' Shop
With the radio on
Because they are Marxists and are totally clueless about economics.
Assuming the weight of D[iesel] = B[iodiesel], and you're running B, you're hauling excess weight in the form
of more expensive/less efficient fuel, you're making more fueling stops, etc.
Whether the alleged maintenance savings can make up for it, I'm not that knowledgeable about it.
Maybe it has a use in metro areas, adding less pollution to congested areas, and the truck is fueled once a day as
a matter of practice.
Any way, I just think it's being pushed regardless of the economics of it. It's great that alternatives are
available in the market.
But, in the end, you're paying more for less.
(Like shrinking candy bars and "half" gallons of icecream.)
You can already buy soy diesel, so it's not necessary to go to fast-food joints begging for old french fry grease.
You can already buy soy diesel.....
I wonder how much petroleum was used to grow that soy and get the oil from it.
To run SVO one should start on bio-diesel until the engine is hot, then switch to SVO that is preheated in the fuel line heaters.
Shouldn't this avoid the 'coking' that you refer to?
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