home-brewing biodiesel

[enigma]

www.frybrid.com

Here's a real good website for waste veggie oil diesel fuel.

From what I can tell, this WVO fuel deal is not quite as simple as some would like it to be.

enigma

 

[gern_blanston]

Oh yeah, in case anyone didn't notice, he's a bit of a geek.
Feel free to e-mail him. He loves to proselytize the wonders of veggy oil. I'll try to stay off my soap box, but cars that get good mileage are the future, and these veggy/bio setups are. I drive a Golf TDI myself, I'm just too lazy to do the veggy-oil thing. But I do average over 47 mpg, and if you haven't driven a late-model turbodiesel, they're a FAR cry from the noisy, smokey, sluggish pigs of yesteryear. It's nice to go 700+ miles on a 15 gallon tank. Great little car.

 

[Dangerkitty]

From what I can see, many of these veggie cars have the veggie oil tanks in the trunk. What happens if you are rear ended? Would there be a chance of 300'F Vegetable oil spewing all over you if you are rear ended on the highway?

 

[Dan CFI/CFII]

WVO is a bit more complicated, because you've got to set up the filters and heaters and all...

But converting WVO (or SVO, or whatever) into BioDiesel gives you plain old BioDiesel, which requires no modifications, and can be mixed in any ratio with dinodiesel.

FurloughedAgain: that's what I'm planning on doing. Buying Veg Oil to make BioDiesel is still pretty cheap, and I could call and get it delivered pretty easily.

Because of all the modifications and complexity of running straight Veg Oil, I'm going to stick with the BioDiesel route myself.

Way of the future?!?! You know it.

Dan

 

[gern_blanston]

From what I can see, many of these veggie cars have the veggie oil tanks in the trunk. What happens if you are rear ended? Would there be a chance of 300'F Vegetable oil spewing all over you if you are rear ended on the highway?

The oil in the tank isn't hot. It gets heated on the way to the engine compartment by running inside a coolant line that's run back to the trunk. The tank heats up a little bit due to the returned oil from the injection pump, but it never gets hot. Pretty slick setup.

 

[FurloughedAgain]

I tend to agree with Dan. I have trouble performing my own oil-change so major modifications to my car are most likely out of the question.

But if I could come up with a small setup to create bio-deisel in my garage and then run it on a straight deisel car....thats a possibility.

 

[FurloughedAgain]

Check this out. I found a biodiesel processor for $249. All it needs is a used water heater and a few drums.

http://www.biodieselwarehouse.com/

 

[jarhead]

What if you went down to Sam's Club and picked up big jugs of vegetable oil? or went to a restaurant supply company and purchased oil?

I'm just wondering if buying what you need is not just easier than trying to store barrels and barrels of used restaurant oil.

This is definately intriguing though.

At Sam's club, a two liter bottle of Olive oil (a little over a half a gallon) runs about $7.00. That's about $13.00 a gallon. Hardly an incentive to avoid gasoline at $2.55 a gallon, unless you could get a hundred miles per gallon or more out of it. And if you could get that kind of mpg, supply and demand rules would kick in, and the price of veggie oil would go through the roof.

As far as collecting waste oil from Burger King, as soon as there was a big demand for it, they would start charging for it, and people would start getting shot for "drive offs" because they swiped French Fry oil.

 

[dash8driver]

Smells like burnt onion rings when he drives.

the next step is to sell advertisement space on the back of his car to the local onion ring joint.






.

 

[FurloughedAgain]

unless you think that VW is going to come out with a Chicken-strip powered Jetta next year, I dont think supply and demand is a problem.

I'm sure i'm just daydreaming (was looking at a diesel jetta on Ebay going for $11,000) but sure seems like a neat idea.

hmmmm jet-fuel is essentially diesel...a french-fry powered learjet...

Seriously, the price of oil headed in the direction it is, at least SOMEONE is thinking of alternatives that may be commercially viable.