Biodiesel plant in Greys Harbor,Washington

[Forgottenhighway]

Here is some interesting info on big business getting on the biodiesel bandwagon.

Cheers, Pat

http://www.capitalpress.info/main.asp?S ... leID=25127

[Sharkey]

I ran this link past the manager of SeQuential Biofuel's production facility and got this reply:

Without some unknown techno-fix, palm oil biodiesel makes lousy b20 and above. B100 from palm is solid at 50 degrees. The WA guys are going for 2% across the board. In this region (where we have fairly cold winters) there will always be a market for b20 and b99 made from used cooking oil or soy or canola.

So it looks like the TANSTAAFL principle applies to "cheap" biodiesel as well.

[Dj]

A friend of mine has his own biodiesel brew rig setup at his house. A friend of his has a cajun restaurant and has WVO coming out his nose, it would seem. Lets John haul off as much as he wants whenever he wants.

So far he's not had any problems extracting the methyl esters from that WVO, and not had any gelling issues that I'm aware of either... and he makes soap out of the byproducts... but then again, this is Texas it never really gets "cold" here...

I need to find out what kind of oil his friend is feeding the fryers with.

But, if you live in a warm enough clime, you can always push plain old veggie oil into the injector pump. Works best if you warm it up nice and hot first, helps the viscosity and you get a better mist into the cylinder.

[Sharkey]

Ew, WVO, no thanks. No one I know who was using WVO/SVO is doing so anymore. Too many issues, too much risk of engine damage, too much poisonous acrolein in the exhaust. I'll stick to B100.

In case you missed it on the site map, there's a whole directory of "Q Fuels" pages from local media. There's getting to be so much of it I can't keep up with the archive duties.

[Larry]

A while back I saw a report on TV about a country that eliminated their dependency on crude oil imports by making bio-diesel a national effort. I can't remember if it was a Central or South American country.

This may be nit picking, but I have a nit to pick! When I hear the term Bio I think biology. Why isn't it Bot-diesel which would infer Botanical as in plants?

Anyway - no WVO/SVO for me. But I would like to build a biodiesel reactor just for fun. From what I've heard it makes a quality "diesel like" product which can be used either 100% or as a blend with pump diesel.

Larry

[Mark R. Obtinario]

When I looked into using WVO it all sounded like a really good idea. That is until I really looked at what I would have to do to use the WVO in any of my vehicles.

Most of the work that has been done on WVO has been by people who have used the WVO in vehicles like the diesel Rabbit or M-B cars. Little to no work has been documented by anyone who has tried to use WVO in large vehicles like a bus.

I quickley ran into the problem of finding enough WVO to run a bus. A diesel powered Rabbit will use less fuel in year (for most drivers anyway) than I would use in a bus in a week.

It it one thing to drive up to a MacDonalds with a 5-gallon bucket and ask if you can have some of their WVO. It is a whole different thing when you drive up in a truck with a several hundred gallon tank and ask if you can have all of their WVO.

It is particularly difficult now that several of the local eateries are now leasing their fry oil--whatever is "waste" goes back to the owner to be re-refined into another product.

I think blends of bio-diesel are going to be the trend for the future. Particularly since more and more local and state government agencies are requiring their fleets to use some sort of bio-diesel blend for fuel.

I have talked shop with diesel mechanics who have had to work on fuel systems that really don't like blends of more than B-10. I am not really sure what is going on in some of the electronically controlled systems to cause failure when bio-diesel is run through them. I know in my old mechanically controlled M-B sedan and DD 2-cycle engines you can run just about anything through them and not hurt them. But just try and run B-15 or greater through a new CAT and you will be on the hook getting home.

I realize WVO and Bio-diesel are not exactly the same thing. I also realize conversing about either subject at the same time can be confusing to those who don't recognize the difference--I am thinking of most of the bubbleheads who read the news on TV in particular. But something must be done to wean ourselves from the "need" to purchase oil from people who have shown consistently they are not our friends.

Sometimes I wonder if going down to Costco and purchasing 5-gallon buckets of fry oil wouldn't be cheaper than going to the local fuel stop and purchasing diesel.

Oh well, these are just some random thoughts on a Friday afternoon.

Mark O.
Castle Rock, WA