The Chinese are great at reverse engineering, they have been doing it for decades!!

 

I called our new governor elect who was mainly elected on a anti-government land give aways to industry and favoritism towards industry in Montana owned by Montanans. He is an oil crop grower and I have worked with him for years. He was very upset about this to say the least and said if was not too late to block the sale he would try. If not he would enact legislation to prevent this type of thing from happening. Sure is cool to live in state with a small population where it's possible to talk directly to the elected officials.
I know there is nothing that can be done to prevent an company from selling out to foreigners but it's just not right when that company was developed with US taxpayer dollars. It's like selling a state university to India.

 

Only partly, I am often amazed at the prices items made in china sell for while (apparently) satisfying profit margins for everyone
Dirt cheap beans brought over on dirt cheap ships to a refinery close to a major port, certainly seems feasible to me, if they want to sell 70 million gallons a year I would think they would have to get the price down
my .02

 

I am ready for the prices to come down..... from what i gather, biofuel is very inexpensive to produce when compared to the fossil variety. farming technology should help that even more once the biofuel starts to catch on more..... Do they really have much chance of selling it if they cant lower the prices below petro-fuel?

 

They won't need to lower the price of bio because there is no way around it, petro fuel is going to continue to get more expensive with increased world demand of a non-renewable product whose peak production is very close to being reached.

 

hey if they pack it up and move it to china, why not just build another. this business could have been bought by hundreds of american companys, but the chinese we willing to pay more. what is the big deal, sounds to me like someone has a chance of a life time to make the big bucks. i have been working for a german owned company for the past 10 years and life still goes on. if my job ends tomorrow, i will say it was a good run and do something else. not spend the rest of my life whinning about it.

 

One of the reasons I bought a diesel is the possibility of using biodiesel fuel when foreign oil goes through the roof. (and it will) Does anyone have any experience with transesterfication of SVO into biodiesel? I found a website that has very detailed instructions on how to do it. I understand that using SVO without converting it will cause problems with injectors.

I read today that there is an estimated 400 years supply of oil from oil sands in Canada which gets a big chunk of their oil from oil sands.

Edwin

 

I've been 'studying' this stuff for years and I don't know what transesterfication is... Realistically, I think it would be easier to go Biodiesel than people let on. All of the fuel the military uses is 20% bio, both jet fuel and Diesel...

All that you need to put into to 'convert' it is some stuff with a lower cetane value. Trying to run SVO is kind of like running Diesel in gassers, just less severe. I guess some people put anti-gel additives and stuff in too. I havn't heard of any first hand accounts of SVO screwing direct injection- nothing proven. I think that clean oil probably wouldn't be a problem. I know that IDI's run it like a dream.

I haven't persuaded anybody to be a test dummy for SVO on a Cummins, yet. I know Greasel says they run fine, but that's kind of biased. It's kind of looking like I'm gonna have to modify my truck.

Sure nobody want's to be a test dummy for me? What's the worst that can happen, blow out injectors? I guess I've heard of piston failures, but that sounds far fetched.

Time to call my Berkely educated Uncle and Cousins.... Time to practice the rhetoric...

 

Transesterfication is a process for breaking the Trigliceride chains in SVO into single chains which perform better in diesels. Here's the website with all the details:

http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html

In short the process uses ethanol with lye to react with the SVO then separating out the glycerin and excess water. This makes biodiesel which is a much better fuel (so they say) than SVO or diesel. It's also completely non-toxic and no sulfer.

I read on another thread about cops checking diesel rig tanks for non-diesel fuel. Is this for non-payment of fuel taxes? What if you had a receipt for payment of the tax?

Edwin

 

I wouldn't say dismantling and shipping the whole plant is too far-fetched, just not probable. An australian company bought an 80 ton/day pure oxygen plant from Muscatine, IA and took it apart, loaded it on train cars, a freighter, and rebuilt it down under. Why not?? Because there are other manufacturers in the world (including the Aussies, coincidentally) closer to the Chinese mainland who could supply new or used equipment easier and cheaper. Therefore, I conclude that the Chinese company actually has an interest in US production. Don't get too sure about imported beans being cost prohibitive!! We import over half of the beef we consume, often at lower prices than domestic beef, even with the shipping!! Just look at McDonald's, etc.!! Also, look at what the MAD Cow bans did for supplies here!! I was quite shocked, living in a major pork producing area, to learn that several prominent restaurant chains were scrambling to replace the famous baby-back ribs that were being refused importation from Europe!! The articles for several days in the Ag pages told of local sources trying to rend the contracts back to domestic sources,but few exist.

 

If bio-diesel becomes a big enough piece of the pie the corp. that own the refinery will start purchasing their own farms and controling the product start to finish.

 

Guys it's METHANOL and lye, not ethanol and lye that cause the transesterification process - which in short separates the oil into a top layer of biodiesel and a lower level of settled glycerin and other byproducts. I HAVE in fact seen nasty pictures from Bosch of SVO injector problems. I would definitely never recommend a greasel or any other kit like that for a 3rd gen CTD. Bio when produced within specs, is a great thing though!

 

As a side note, it is possible to make biodiesel with ethanol. You end up with ethyl-esters. Most processors use methanol, however, and end up with methyl-esters. The ethanol is difficult to work with as it absorbs water very easily. For a successful transesterfication the alcohol (methanol or ethanol) has to be extremely dry (very little water) and this is more difficult with ethanol. www.biodiesel.org has a great database of published papers, and some of them show ethyl-esters have better cold weather properties than the methyl-esters (lower freeze point for the same base vegetable oil). The nice aspect of using ethanol is you have a completely energy independent product (all products used in the fuel making process are domestically produced). However, it is also possible to produce methanol biologically (using wood) as well.

You can use NaOH or KOH as the lye component. NaOH is cheaper and you use less volume than KOH, but the KOH produces a more liquid glycerine byproduct that is easier to deal with, especially in cold weather. Also, fertilizing with the KOH byproduct has been argued to be better than the NaOH byproduct as the sodium ions in NaOH can eventually poison the soil.

 

Sort of doubt that.
Why take the same risks with the weather that all farmers do if you don't have to?
In the long run it would probably cost them more.

 

TDIWyse is correct, I just stated methanol because that's what 99% of people use, and for someone looking to get into brewing, ethanol will be trickier.

I think disposal of the glycerin is the number one reason people shy away from homebrewing.