Ive heard about using SVO (Straight vegatable oil) as a fuel substitute. They say it will work in any diesel and requires no mods. Is it cheaper? Power Issues? Ruin motor? I read that it will corode rubber lines and hoses. Does a 97 cummins have many rubber hoses? maybe this could be a new source of cheap fuel. I would miss the all the smoke though.

 

I haven't tried it, but looks more promising every day with the way petro-diesel prices are going.<br><br>It's common in Europe to use the biodiesel fuel. I don't know what they use to address the degradation of fuel system components. I would think you would want to check your fuel system, and find out what needs to be modified, before running B100 in it.<br>I know B20 was available in some states, which is 20% bio, 80% petro, and at that concentration did no harm to fuel systems. Those that had tried it claimed better MPG, performance, and power. Don't know about smoke.<br><br>At any rate, at least our diesels will run on more than one type of fuel, should a crisis arise.

 

I've seen people strain oils from soy and such and then use it as a diesel substitue.<br><br>Pure bio diesel only works when the engine is up to operating temperature as heat is a major component of getting the substances to ignite. <br><br>Fossil diesel (no1 no2) has a certain amount of volitility that allows it to start under compression only.<br><br>So most pure bio diesel situations convert from one fuel to the other once warm.

 

Not as easy as it sounds. The process is called transesterifcation. In a nut shell, you mix NaOH (sodium hydroxide) and methanol to form methanoate and mix the formula with vegatable oil. A glycerin layer forms on the bottom and the rest is biodiesel. Glycerin is a hazardous waste and the ATF gets a concerned if they find out you are manufacturing it. .........That is another chemical story. You can recycle the glycerin by placing a mixing beaker in an ice bath and SLOWLY mixing nitric acid with it. DO NOT try this! It forms a HIGHLY unstable compound better known as nitroglycerin. <br><br>http://www.biodieseltechnologies.com/<br><br>For you do it yourselfers..........(don't let the wife catch you doing this!) (they get REALLY upset, throw things, and curse)<br><br>http://www.dangerouslaboratories.org/biodiesel.html<br><br>Biodiesel does not have very good cold weather qualities. <br><br>Anyhow.......figured you guys would enjoy some neat chemistry readying. The biodiesel stills costs more than the pump stuff unless you can get your vegatable oil and supplies for free of near free.

 

I remember reading about this a while back. They said you could mix it with your regular diesel to save the planet, but the stuff was like $60/gal so yeah it's made out of corn but not really economically feasible.<br><br>No Worries

 

thanks for all the info. I was hoping to hear something like, &quot;yeah it works great and its way cheaper.&quot; But I guess thats not the case. At least not yet.

 

What happens if you go out and buy a bottle or five of veggy oil and dump it into your tank???<br>Will it run like a Ford/sick pig???<br>DM01

 

I believe you can buy it, several oil companies sell it. I also think we are using a mix in our trucks at work! But it cost more a gallon!<br><br>KC

 

DM01: If you just want to buy veggie oil and pour it in the tank- why not leave the tank empty. You'll save the cleaning of all those parts. <br>Basically the veggie oils for human consumption will burn- but will not have teh other properties needed to power a stock cummins. Since the diesel and the veggie oil won't mix too good in some cases you would have the worst of both worlds. Some companies over here use either straight vegetable oil in converted diesels or transestherificated ( sp ??? ) vegetable oils in stock diesel applications. <br>As for the biodiesel, which is the transestherificated veggie oil, I'd like to say that I use it with good results. A whole lot depends on the quality the supplier delivers. Over here the basic rules for biodiesel are the same as for fossil stuff, and it must work in any mixture with fossil diesel. So the properties like lubricity, cetane rating, pour point, cloud point, combustion temp etc are the same or better than the minimum requirements for diesel. The only downside on the stuff is that it contains less energy per volume. So you will have to refill more often. ( Price is equal if compared per calory )<br>On straight vegetable oil there is no norm for the properties I mentioned above. The differences in these properties are very big between different plants. So it is virtually impossible to predict anything from the term &quot;vegetable oil&quot;<br>We were using some 500 KW powerplants to burn used vegetable oils. One of the main problems was that certain combustion products that got transported into the engine oil through blowby would lead to a polimerization of the oil. This led to severe problems with the uptime- very frequent oil changes and burning the engine oil in the engine were contributing to higher costs for the electricity than using diesel and paying for it. <br>We restructured the plant completely. Now we use stirling engines. In these engines the fuel burned will not get in contact with moving parts. <br>Also a lot of the used veggie oil is used for heatng purposes, because the process is that much easier to control. <br><br>Just my 2c<br><br>AlpineRAM

 

I had initially checked into this and there was a short discussion on here about it. There is a company that makes a conversion kit to run a diesel engine on used cooking oil. You can find out information here. The main consensus was that it probably isn't the best idea for most intended uses. If you are strictly using your truck as a commuter, then it might be an alternative.

 

<br> What will they think of next. <br>Thanks for the link really enjoyed reading about WVO.