Diesel guys

Beer Thirty

Beer Thirty

New Member
Sep 10, 2008
333
Commerce, MI
Boat Info
1995 200 BR Signature Series

Towed with a 98 Chevy Z71
Engines
5.0 Mercruiser w/an alpha 1
Im curious, i've got alot of friends with souped up turbo diesels and the topic of discussion that always comes up is Bio diesel.

Do any of you boat guys run, or have you looked into, Bio Diesel?


EDIT: Damn, just realized this was the wrong forum. Sorry Mod's.
 
Frank W. is going to pipe in and tell you how he makes bio-diesel from the walnuts he grows in his yard and puts in his VW rabbit diesel weed eater.
 
Uhhhh....... yes.

We have a homebrew still set up to produce biodiesel from waste vegetable oil. I use it in my off road and farm equipment but ran into problems with the state department of revenue on using it in cars and trucks. They seem to think I owe them highway taxes on every gallon I burn in my trucks or car. Since the other problem is developing a good source for WVO, we just burn it all in tax-exempt equipment and the tax man can drop dead.

While it is true that every restaurant selling french fries produces waste oil, they are mostly franchises who have national or regional contracts for WVO removal and an individual can't get it. That leaves you sourcing from Mom and Pop restaurants in small quantities.

Truthfully, the space required, the mess, and the hassle on sourcing makes producing homebrew biofuel not practical. Now that I've figured it out and know I can make consitantly good fuel, I wish someone else owned the still and the mess!
 
Hi Frank,

I have a customer here in Austin who owns a hamburger joint. He burns the waste oil in his duramax powered Chevy truck. There is a tank in the bed that has some sort of a recirculating pump/heater system that preps it for running through the engine. It's a pretty slick set up and he has been running it for years now.
I can't believe they are hassling you about road taxes when you are making your own fuel and paying for license and registration.
I thought we are supposed to be "encouraging energy independence".....
There is a big mexican restaurant here at the marina "Carlos and Charlies", I keep trying to figure out if it is worth tapping into their "stream of grease" :) so I can burn it in my boat...
 
I have a friend who runs french fry oil in his truck, always makes me hungry when I ride in it. I looked into it a little and NY seems to want 65 cents a gallon tax if you make it.
 
Geriksen,
This country only wants to line BIG Corporations pockets and there own. I wanted to install solar panel on my roof. The Electric company sends a rep to take pictures of ur roof and figure ur roofs orientation to the sun . They go back two years on ur electric bill and then send u a report on the # of panels u need and how much u will likely generate based on house location and orientation . They will only sell u enough panels to cut ur average usage in half. I told the rep i wanted MAX KW panels and he said not If u want to participate in this program. ( which is how u get the rebates. ) if u dont use there program u pay the full cost and u can install what ever u wish. NOw thats a scam.
Rob
 
unbelievable....
good thing we have these wonderful organizations to solve all our problems for us.
 
I know a guy who tried running Bio Diesel in his 500 DA, didn't run very long.
 
Understand that there is a difference between waste vegetable oil and refined bio-diesel.

We built a mini-distillery to separate the crap from the useable fuel. Done right you need to filter the WVO 5 or 6 times. We start with a door screen and end up passing the end product thru a 2 micron Racor. We don't need to heat the biodiesel to get it to flow or burn, and it does not seem to pick up microbial growth/sludge like diesel fuel. We've run it in the dead of winter at 100% (not diluted with pump diesel) in a GM 6.5 turbo diesel, a 6.0L Ford/Navistar Powerstroke, a 1.8 L VW engine in a Mazda Miata frame, a 1.9L VW turbo diesel, a Mercedes 300SDL, as well as various Kubotas, Ford/New Holland, Case, Cummins and Yanmar powered equipment (whatever I happened to own at the time) engines with no problems.

I can tell you that bushogging a 10 acre field with a tractor powered by refined WVO makes you never want to go to another Mcdonald's restaurant.

There are folks around here who have cut the corners and bought the tank heaters switching valves and tried to burn straight WVO, but their success has been mixed. Most have problems with clogged filters (diesels won't run on old french fries and chicken parts) and got tired of changing filters on the side of the road and have quit.
 
This Wikipedia article describes the transesterification process which Frank uses. It's not for kids. You can get hurt if you make a mistake.

Best regards,
Frank
 
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A customer of mine runs a Biodiesel company in Florida. He was telling me Saturday since the price of diesel has retreated the buisness is not profitable at this time. He stated that the company's profit at this point is a goverment subsidey for each gallon it produces. His cost of the solvents drying agents and catalaysts have come down. The problem is the logistics of getting the WVO to the plant. They are looking for a way to shorten the supply chain.

I have run biodiesel in my E300D. Car ran fine. This was commerical fuel so I did not have any of the above problems.
 
Well, the alcohol and lye do require you to be careful and not under the influence of anything when working with it.

I didn't mention it but we end up with a lot of glycerine as a by product from which we are making hand soap.......best damned hand soap you will ever use----it just smells like crap.
 
fwebster said:
I didn't mention it but we end up with a lot of glycerine as a by product from which we are making hand soap.......best damned hand soap you will ever use----it just smells like crap.
Click to expand...

Put a little scent in it, maybe lavender, and I bet you could sell it at Cracker Barrel.
 
Tried it and almost everything changes the consistancy of the soap. The glycerine is so pure that a good percentage of the batches stay soft and never harden, but this could be a product of the humidity on the days we make the soap.

The other thing is that the odor of burned vegetable oil is damned near "nuclear".....it is impervious to everything and likely has a 1000 year half life.
 
Small town, everyone knows everyone or is related to them. Its hard to stay under the radar. This really has not posed a problem since we more than use the capacity of the bio-diesel set up in our off road equipment.
 
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