Last night coming home from work up in the mountains, I was following an old Mercedes. Shortly after coming up behind said Mercedes, I noticed a distinct aroma permeating the interior of my car. It smelled like I had just walked into McDonalds!
First time I had ever seen a bio-diesel in real life and was really surprised at how fragrant the “exhaust” is on them!
I just read an article about how people are blowing up/ burning down their homes making it. They had a quote from a guy who burned down his barn where he basically said he is still gonna make it even though it burned half his property. I guess some people never learn from their mistakes.
There’s some really good chemistry/engineering on the internets regarding such activities.
and by good i mean AWFUL.
me and another student at Ohio Technical college created a recipe for it a few months ago. our fuel was chosen out of 4 other recipes to be used in all of the commercial vehicles at school. its SUPER easy to make yourself provided you have all of the filters, beakers, and of course ingredients. it was actually pretty fun going around to restaurants to get fry oil and doing the whole filtering process. we had an interview with Tomorrows Technician magazine, but i have yet to see our article.
Or - he learned from his mistake, won’t make it again, and will fuel his vehicle for significantly less than anyone else.
It doesn’t have to make sense… it just has to work. People aren’t doing this to become chemists… they are doing it to save a lot of money. Do you think the people who are out to save a lot of money are the same type of people that understand the reaction in their fuelmister? No…
Also - That smell doesn’t necessarily have to be bio-diesel, that Mercedes will run off of straight vegetable oil. No work has to be done to clean oil… just put it in your tank. Those cars already have built in heaters for the fuel… and their injectors play nice with the oil. My truck wasn’t meant to run on oil, but with some added heat… she purrs like a kitten on straight oil.
Which is exactly why people are burning down their houses. “Just make it work” isn’t an attitude you should have when making FUEL.
I was under the impression that all you had to do was filter the particulate matter out of the grease before you put it into your vehicle. How are people blowing up their barn doing that?
It does have to be heated but, what are they using to heat it, hydrogen? lol
Running on fryer oil != bio-diesel
Here are the steps for making Bio… in as short a way as I know how.
Collect dirty oil.
Filter warm oil through a pair of jeans.
Heat oil (preferably with an electric hot water tank)
Let the water settle out of the oil.
Drain off the bottom of the HWT until no water is left.
Filter again.
Get the pH of the oil using a titration test.
The pH level of your oil will determine how much methanol and lye you have to add.
Make the methanol/lye mix and pour it into your warm oil.
Mix for several hours using a pump.
Let that mixture settle.
Drain from the bottom again to remove the glycerin.
Once your seeing clean bio stop draining.
You can wash the bio here if you wish.
Put bio in your vehicle and drive.
Methanol, as scary as it sounds, is just racing fuel. Not anymore dangerous than a can of gasoline. The amounts your using aren’t any larger than your gas can in your garage anyway.
Lye is almost a typical home product. It is a caustic soda.
Vegetable Oil is flammable… at its flashpoint. Just like frying a turkey… only there usually isn’t an open flame when you’re dealing with an electric water heater.
Methanol is the most expensive piece of the puzzle so people are trying ways of collecting it back from the process. It is just a catalyst. This is something people usually screw up. You’re better off selling the glycerin and just buying more Methanol.
As far as just filtering it out and running it… yes. This Mercedes could do that. BUT - That isn’t Bio-D, that is WVO or waste vegetable oil. If you have a good source, it could run off of SVO or straight vegetable oil (not a waste product).
I stored over 800 gallons of oil in my garage for over 6 months and never once was my life at risk.
More people burn down their houses from frying turkeys than making biodiesel.
Buffalo Biodiesel is selling Bio for over $9gal overseas… they are/were being paid to make it by restaurants who had to pay for the oil to be removed. Talk about double dipping. They also get huge tax benefits.
Bio is a wonderful thing… I’d rather remove the science and the time and the processor, and just run oil in my truck. I’m not buying methanol or lye and I still have my entire factory fuel system to fall back on if I have problems.
Yeah, just running on oil isn’t a big deal, but when you start getting people who couldn’t grasp high school chemistry brewing bio-diesel in their garage with shitty components they wired together themselves to save money things get scary.
It is as simple as my post made it sound. It is not scary and it is not dangerous.
You’re more likely to die filling your lawnmower with gas.
This guy clearly made a mistake… but if he thought there was a flaw in the process and not his execution of the process, do you really think he would be doing it again?
People make mistakes all the time. If you rear-end someone at a red-light would you stop driving?
If I rear ended someone at a red light and had no idea what the red light meant, or how to operate the car, yeah, I’d take it as a sign to quit.
There is absolutely no way this is a true statement.
Especially since people who aren’t retarded fill their lawnmower when the engine is cold, or at least out in their yard or driveway so if something does catch fire it doesn’t burn the house down.
I fill mine while it’s running…in my living room…
LOL
That is about the only way that it could be more dangerous to fill your mower.
Things I’ve seen in people’s online documentation of their biodiesel setups that gave me chills.
I’m not saying bio diesel is that dangerous, I’m saying lots of people make it that dangerous. When gas was $2 a gallon the typical bio diesel brewer was an educated person with the time, money and education to put together a safe system. When gas hit $4 a gallon lots of poor stupid people started cobbling together systems that they didn’t understand and couldn’t afford to build properly to “save money”.
where do you sell the glycerin?
I quoted JayS… it is a true statement on who it was a response to. 
It does not apply to me.
Fuel Flash point Autoignition
temperature
Ethanol 12.8°C (55°F) 365°C (689°F)
Gasoline (petrol) <−40°C (−40°F) 246°C (475°F)
Diesel >62°C (143°F) 210°C (410°F)
Jet fuel >38°C (100°F) 210°C (410°F)
Kerosene (paraffin oil) >38–72°C (100–162°F) 220°C (428°F)
Vegetable oil (canola) 327°C (620°F)[1]
Biodiesel >130°C (266°F)
Do you know how hard it is to ignite vegetable oil while you’re making bio?
Do you know how easy it is to ignite gasoline while filling your lawn mower?
Don’t millions and millions of people refuel their lawn mowers? Then essentially, are the chances of one of them dying higher than the chances of one of the thousands making bio fuel?
I never let the mower cool before refueling. It will evaporate off of the motor faster if the motor is hot because a huge spill is inevitable.
So… the same people you’re accusing of making bio-diesel?
Any hippie that wants to make soap. Or… another bio guy looking to save the methanol so he can re-use it. Or someone who wants to make fire logs with it.
JayS… it is pretty clear that after the 5 minutes you’ve researched this topic you have come to the same understanding as everyone else who isn’t actually active with alternative fuels. I understand your concern.
Just like everything else in life… there is a right way and a wrong way. There are ways that work that aren’t right… and the more expensive and time consuming “right” way of doing something.
The HF clear water pump we all use is $40 (instead of a $300 fuel pump)… and 100% of the people using one have wired it themselves… and 99% of those people plug it in when they want it on and un-plug it when they want it off. Isn’t that safer than that same person trying to wire up a switch?
Don’t kid yourself though. Poor people have always been making bio-diesel. it never was, and is never going to be a rich man’s game.
If you researched for 5 more minutes you would have stumbled upon a lot of other sites bashing the setups you’re referring to. People offering time and supplies to help out people who do not have “safe” setups… This is a “free” community. People help eachother whatever way they can.
^ Don’t you have a red light camera you need to install?
Bottom line on bio-diesel, I don’t give a shit. I get my gas from a gas station. Neither my neighbor to the left nor my neighbor to the right are brewing it, so anyone who burns their house down with a poor setup won’t affect me. You sound like you know what you’re doing, so good luck.
What I do know from experience working with licensed electricians is how to spot unsafe setups, and there’s a lot of them floating around on the web.