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Small scale biodiesel

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glort:

The ONLY way to make Bio is to use some sort of animal or vegetable fat. Mineral (engine, transmission, Transformer etc) Oil CANNOT be used. I have cracked  engine oil in a pyrolysis type process to get a Petrol/ diesel type blend which works fantastic.  With multi stage cracking, you can get a more pure output depending on what you want.  For my purposes that wasn't nessacary as I mainly used it as a blending agent anyway and it worked perfect and is much ligher than the base stock and cleaned of all you don't want as well.

I have made tens of thousands of Litres of Bio and the great majority of it was with Veg oil because fats have a much higher gel  point and are therefore only really practical in summer. Plus oil is infinitely more readily available that fat here anyway. If I came across a source of fat ( got 2200L in drums once from a place that had been storing it because they couldn't get rid of it. ) I take it and blend it with oil or just use it for summer fuel and kept the other stuff for winter.  Bio from lard etc ( Done it with Duck Fat too) is great bio, Just a bit harder to handle in the making process and you have to watch the gel Point when its' done. You can mix fats and oil when you cook it up with no problem.
Fats often Titrate lower than oil and what I have seen tends to be less flogged before being changed as well.

Also have used Animal fat as straight oil in summer and that works really well also. Leave it in the sun to melt ( if it's cool enough to solidify in the first place ) and run it from there. Mainly used it where I knew it would all be used in one trip and threw some oil in at the and and it was fine.

I haven't bothered with Bio for some time now.  Straight Veg oil blended with a bit of ULP  to suit the season works perfectly well and does not cause any of the problems the pedantic bedwetters  whom have never even tried it or did it wrong, claim.
If an engine is good for Bio it's good for blending.

I have been going over my small diesel generators preparing them for what I think may be tough times ahead and I don't thank any of them have ever had diesel in them since in my possession. Run them all on straight oil,  Can't even remember blending anything with them.
My Kubota Diesel Mower loves the stuff.  Runs smooth and clean on it and no different to when I got it with a tank full of diesel.  Quickly added a little oil to that for lub purposes but no different on the straight oil I have been running it on for over 6 Months.

I run a basic DIY water injection system on my Vehicle and I can do just about everything wrong with the fuelling etc and the engine still runs better than when I got it. Do not bother with the 2 tank BS or changing over or any of that, don't pre heat the oil which is complete crap and a waste of time as well, Straight oil with 0-15% ULP and that's it.   Add some Alcohol to the mix and the power boost is significant and no question of it's effect even with the Butt dyno let alone a stop watch. Thing pulls you back in the sat hard and the EGT's and engine temps go DOWN at the same time.

I am looking to make some small Bio batches for an RV diesel Type heater I am looking to heat the house with this winter.  Then again, if the price of Diesel keeps falling, I may not bother and just blend that with about 25% straight oil which will make it cheaper still.

the biggest problem I think with doing Bio in the US is oil is hard to get.  Mate that runs Burners on it for his work has given up trying to get it and is now running a mix of Diesel and WMO.  Here there is so much oil everywhere I can literally get as much as I want.

Golden rule with oil or Bio is to make sure you secure your source first.
Thankfully not a problem here.  Don't know how many times I have been pumping drums and other owners have come up and pleaded with me to take theirs too.

The collectors the world over are mongeral Cowboys that talk tough and then screw their customers over anytime it suits them.

Mary B:
Here the rendering plant buys all the waste fryer oil from restaurants, they have contracts and bid to get it. So the sources here dried up fr all but small town cafes. They don't produce enough to get the rendering guys to go out of the way to stop. The bar here in town would probably let me take it, doubt it would be more than 100 gallons a year....

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