I have seen much talk about trying biodiesel as an alternative to high fuel costs. Its seems to come up more and more often as fuel prices increase. Well, I having been working on my own system for a year now and would like to share my findings. First off it works!!! you can make your own fuel put it in your tank and your truck will GO, with only slight noticeable decrease in power. That is the good news, also it is cheaper!!! for sure. However the time factor is considerable. I have run bio-d in my 98 2500 12valver mostly and have had no serious side effects except a slightly lower idle speed, and a very different smell. I have set-up a system using a 55gal drum as a mixer and a separate drum to "wash" the fuel in. The thing I found and I believe most would find running a cummins is that with a 55gal mixer you get approx 35gal of yield which does not go far in these trucks. Especially if you drive a considerable amount of miles like me. I drive near 4K per month and that amount lasts about a week. I would spend saturday making a batch and the rest of the week nights handling and washing the reacted fuel. I jus finished mounting a 270gal container to make fuel in. I have 300gal clear plastic container to "wash" in. In short the savings aren't worth it unless you make a whole bunch of fuel... way more then 30-35 gal. The systems offered on the internet I have seen mentioned don't yeild much volume either. It is ok for someone running a vw jetta that doesn't use as much fuel but for us you really need more volume. The other factor to consider is the cost of the biodiesel. With rising fuel costs the cost of methanol alcohol is rising too. It is difficult to obtain in large volumes too. I am dealing with a commercial chemical distributor and must have a tax ID number for a business to purchase it and they will not ship to a residential location. If you have to ship it yourself you must have a CDL in Texas with a hazardous chemicals certification to haul it. When I started my quest alcohol was $1.48 in San Antonio Texas if purchased in a quantity of 4-55gal drums or more. Now it is near $3.00 a gallon. It is still cheaper to make fuel but it costs closer to $1.00/gal for finished fuel. Plus the time and effort building your system, the cost of the materials to do so...which are considerable, and the steep learning curve to a smooth process. If there is more interest to this post I will be glad to post more information regarding Bio-d. Also, on a similar note I have successfully run straight vegetable oil in my cummins and that may be the much cheaper and less involved way to beat the fuel problem in the end, but it has proven a ground breaking research progress that is also layden with hardships trials and money pits. With this system you simply filter (more hairy then it seems with thick used and fatty cooking oil) the used oil insert it in a heated system to deliver it from an aux. tank to the injector pump. Hope this might help clear the fog on the cheap fuel that everyone wants to adress.

 

I have also wondered about running straight veggie oil in my rig. What does it take to do it?

 

Have you considered running a blend of B-Diesel mixed with the Dino-Diesel?

Most stations 'round here are selling a 20% B-D to Diesel mix.
Advertised as less noticable variance in performance, and the blend has more lubricty than Diesel with an additive.

 

chevummins, I assume you are making your BD from WVO. One factor you didn't mention is the time and effort it's takes you running around collecting the WVO.
This can be more time consuming than the processing phase.

In my area it's almost impossible to find any WVO, it's all spoken for. This is mainly due to a new BD plant in the area that mostly processes oil crops but also buys WVO. A few folks have made this their sole source of income and pay the restaurants, etc for the WVO, putting the guys out of business who were getting it for free. I expect to see more of this happening as fuel costs increase, best to guarantee your WVO sources before you invest money in processing equipment.

 

There are a few companies making kits to run on WVO . Run a search using keywords diesel vegetable oil . One of these companies says WVO doesn't work well with '99 -'02 CTD due to injectors used those years . WVO has to be heated before using . You start on diesel until the WVO is warm and shut down on diesel to clear the WVO from the lines . The problem is if you have a bad injector and you get WVO in your oil . What happens when your engine is shut down and cools off ?

 

Just to clarify, a few people don;t know this yet. But it's spreading fast. The troubles with regular WVO are soon coming to a head. Most of the kits and such for homemade bio is using WVO. The process is really neat, and they had a whole spot about it on Tricks! on the powerblock one day. I'm tempted to start doing the homeade bio soon here.

Some people get confused between WVO and homeade bio. They almost seem they are the same, and they are quite different. The homade Bio does NOT require a heater to run or even regular fuel to start/stop your truck. It burns cleaner than reg fuel and smells like french fries too.

 

Can you buy food grade veggie oil and run it like bio? Maybe the cost is the killer there.

 

You can buy factory made BD cheaper than you can buy vegie oil.
I worked quite a bit with the BD industry a few years ago. One of things we found is that the major aim for a commercial plant that uses oil crops to produce BD is to produce livestock feed rather than BD.
The BD needs to be considered as a byproduct, the real money is in the pulp left over after oil extraction.

 

You are absolutely correct about the collection of WVO (Waste Vegetable Oil) for the processing of BioD, it is a whole other aspect of the equation and I did not mention much about it for the sake of the length of my commentary. It is still available in my neck of the woods but you must do the leg-work to go visit with restaurant owners make a sales type pitch and be ready with your own container to be left at the store for them to fill. Some owners are adverse to 55gal drums and are turned off of them as containers suitable for waste oil collection. I simply pass them by and move on to someone who will accept one. The time consuming portion after set-up is not so great as the mixing time at home. I am using drums and a hand type barrel pump to collect my oil. I have a generator and drill motor mounted to a gear reduction to drive the pump so it is automatically operated on site. I have had little trouble finding oil sources so far but know that as stated before it will get more difficult to find WVO as more people start BioD. I try to stay with smaller restaurants and other facilities that use cooking oil. This allows an actual relationship with the owner and they are not targeted by big companies like griffin industries who want to collect large amounts of oil. My main point in all of this is to give others a glimpse into the effort involved in such an endeavour. I do not intend to discourage by any means but instead give a reality check to these emotions tied to high fuel prices. I am still pursuing this process and see it as worthwhile but I certainly did not forsee all of these difficulties at the begining. I have seen many posts where it seems like people think they can buy a prefab system and tomorrow be running on fuel that is very cheap. I am here to say "that is unrealistic." Don't be sold on it without doing some serious research and maybe visiting with some people already doing this. I hope this helps some people out there and wish everyone happy dieseling whether fossil fuel or vegetable oil. Take care
-Greg Beaman

 

Chevummins,

I've been looking into WVO processing, and have a question about the titration steps. I understand about figuring how many grams of lye per liter of bio to add. My question is how to figure out how much methanol that mixes to?

 

If you have figured out the titration you have done the hard work. The alcohol included in the mixture is a fixed amount, it does not vary per acidity of the WVO. The ratio I believe to actually complete the reaction is in the neighborhood of 12% alcohol to volume (liters or gallons) of WVO. However you must use some amount greater then this to actually complete the reaction. Most people use between 20-25% . In other words if you are reacting 100L of WVO and you found your titration to be 8g/liter NaOH (lye) then you would add a mix of 800grams of lye to an amount of alcohol between 20-25L (20-25% of the 100L of WVO) Mix the alcohol and lye together then add the now Methoxide to the unreacted WVO and mix again. The amount of alcohol you add depends on how well your mixer works how long you mix. Add closer to the 25% mark at first then when you build a little faith in the process you can slowly reduce it to find out just how little you can get away with, but it won't be much less then 20%. The extra amount is really needed to drive the reaction to completion, and there are ways to recover unreacted alcohol from the glycerol after the reaction is complete, but I can't see them as being feesible to save money. Hope this answers your question. Is it just as clear as mud? hehe
-Greg Beaman

 

Chevcummins - thanks for sharing your experiences. There are several of us here that are experienced with biodiesel, homebrewing, and have run it for a long time. I think your posts are pretty well thought out , however your point about processors making too small of batches is only really applicable to the guys that want to run b100, or drive tons of miles like you do. Most guys are interested in running some kind of blend, let alone the worries of running b100 with hpcr injection (3rd gens). In any case, it's great to hear about your adventures with it. The process is not as complicated or tricky as you seem to make it seem - and I hope more people get into it.

I know a friend and I are considering making/buying an appleseed processor, which should yield some decent sized batches. We are not short on wvo, we both have a few friends in the restaurant business that are happy to donate oil. I know that guys will not have luck trying to get oil from a local fast food chain, however as mentioned above - going into a restaurant with an environmentally friendly sales pitch is typically all you'll need. That or a local potato chip company who hasn't already been snatched up by griffin or the likes...

One of the only burning questions that most of us that have been into bio for a while is that are considering homebrewing - how the heck do you dispose of all of the gylcerine byproduct? I've seen people with stacks of it in the back yard, not an option. I do not have time nor desire to make anything out of it. Just curious what you do with it ChevCummins

 

How long does it take to make one batch?? 10-12 hours??

 

Infidel, ... Where in Montana is the Bio-diesel plant? I can get tons of oil and would like to be able to sell to them. Any info you could pass on would help.

I'm currently running filtered WVO, not bio-diesel, it certainly is a lot less work. You do have to install a seperate fuel circuit for it though. Another advantage is I can run it the year round.

Thanks ... Ken

 

A littled off topic , I wanted to add to the truck side, this site did a lot of reseach with the cummins eng.http://web.missouri.edu/~pavt0689/biofuel.html
Biodiesel-Biofuels Research