Posted March 2001
My biodiesel story: Dave Clempson in
Scotland
I became
interested in BD towards the end of
last year during the tanker embargo. I searched the net and found out
what I could about BD and decided to make my own. I decided on the following
process using WVO from local pubs.
1. Heat and dry WVO in reaction vessel, and test 1 Litre samples to
decide amout of chemicals. This came out as 15% methanol and 6.25
g/l lye.
2. Carry out main reaction and allow to settle for 3 hours.
3. Drain glycerin allow to settle and drain again.
4 Transer 50% of batch to wash vessel, and 50% to buffer drum.
5. Wash both 50% batches one at a time using equal amounts of water and
100mil of acetic acid wash until PH is between 7 and 8, and wash water is
reasonably clear.
6. Clean out reaction vessel and return all washed BD to reaction
vessel.
7. Mix and heat to 130 degc for 10 minutes to remove water. 8 When BD has cooled
transfer to fuel dispensing drum.
The resulting fuel was a clear golden colour, ph 7-8 SG .88
and a sample on taper burnt cleaner than dinodiesel. The fuel has been
used in a 1998 Toyota Corolla 2.0 diesel. at concentrations between 50%
and 90% BD. and all seems ok except for some smoke on first cold start of
the day, but early days yet!!
The process above was achieved using the following home made equipment.
Process vessel: 45 Gal steel drum on stand with motor driven stirrer, digital
thermometer in pocket, and domestic immersion heater. The tank is insulated with
1 inch of mineral wool, and an old blanket for higher temperatures. The required
temperatures are achieved much more readily when the process vessel is
insulated, and it also keeps enough heat to settle and drain out the glycerin.
Wash Vessel: This is an open top 45 Gal plastic drum on a stand. The wash
water pump and BD transfer pump are mouted in the base of the stand. The wash
water pump was installed to draw water from the vessel bottom and spray on to
the oil top using water sprinklers. This was not very successful and the oil was
washed using a paddle.
Buffer Drum: This is a 45 Gal steel drum on stand for holding pre-washed
oil. The process vessel holds 160 L of oil per run but only half of
this can be washed at a time.
Dispensing Drum: 45 Gal drum on stand dispensing pump and filter mounted
in stand. The fuel is deliver to the car by a standard filling
station nozzle and hose.
Some observations:
1. Drying the WVO prior to reaction was a good idea, the tank level
dropped 2cm after drying. The majority of the water was removed at a temperature
of 60 to 70 degc the temperature only rose to 100+ towards the end of the
drying.
2. The final drying of the BD after washing resulted in very little water being
removed concidering the washing process used. The oil was stirred to a good
emulsion and left to stand for several hours be for drying.
3. The weather recently has dropped to -5 degc overnight but fuel mixes of 10%
BD and 90% BD have not caused any starting failures. The car runs well once
warmed.
4. I contacted Toyota and asked about using BD in the Corolla, They said they
had no experience of using this fuel. This was from a UK based customer service
centre. I was a little unfortunate in choice of car. Toyota will not sell
customers workshop manuals, and the usual "Haynes" type manuals
do not cover this particular car and engine. So any breakdowns are going to be
fun.
Posted September 2000
Martin Steele. U.K. - How the hell did I get involved with this mad cap project. ? It all
started about two years ago. I had just come home from work as an industrial window cleaner and had one eye on one of those kids
news programmes, and the other on the newspaper, when out of the blue something came on that really made my ears prick up, did I
have this right someone called pacific bio-diesel had a plant somewhere in Japan and they were turning all that used fish frying
oil into FUEL ?!!! If that was the case there had to be a drawback, massive conversions to vehicles, pollution, low mpg, bad
performance. All that evening and long into the night I got to thinking, “I’m going
to manufacture that stuff”. Think of the benefits, at over £3.00 a gallon at the pump for fossil fuel. That night I got no sleep.
The next few days were spent feverishly ringing every university and college in the United Kingdom to find out more, but nothing, no
one knew a thing, it was totally alien to all those experts that I’d contacted. The next few days were spent trying to find someone
who did know what I was going on about, and at the same time staring into bottles and bottles of veggie oil. It was so heavy and
gloopy, just not the sort of thing you’d put into your treasured engine. Then an idea, what if I blended it with diesel?. Bit of a
risk, but why not? I wanted to know if this theory would actually work. Off I toddled to the local supermarket and bought twelve
litres of rapeseed oil. “We’re having a bit of a fryup”, I said to the checkout assistant.
Then the moment of truth, this was it , was I really going to do this to my beloved VW
Passat.? Funnel in the tank, which already
had 24 litres of fossil in situ, and glug glug, in it went. I must be mad, this made the mix around 33%, I bounced up and down on
the bonnet mixing the oils as best I could, got in the car, turned the key, and off I went. Down the street, round the block, and again ,
still running. The only difference I immediately noticed was the smell from the exhaust, a faint smell of barbecue.
Two thousand miles later, and no problems, apart from getting rid of those darn solids in the used cooking oil.
(R.V.O) . I knew that
this was not the bio-diesel which had been reviewed in the news programme, but it worked and probably would for some time to
come, but I knew that this was not the way, there was of course something else. There had to be.
I renewed the research, and managed to contact the Ministry of Food and Fisheries who thankfully had heard of Bio-diesel, and
what’s more they had information to impart. A few international phone calls later and a contact called Maurice Raine and hey
presto, an enlightening book From the Fryer to the Fuel Tank volume one. Until then I hadn’t really thought about the political or
environmental issues, but that was all about to change.
Since then a lot has happened, newspaper articles, radio
interviews, (totally terrifying), and 17,500 miles under the bonnet. I have literally talked to hundreds of astonished and interested
people and one of the questions that nearly always comes up is “can we grow enough oil bearing crops”?. Sadly in the U.K. the
answer is no, although we can grow a fair amount, we’d need to also shift our diet to a more vegetable based one.
We can release a heck of a lot of acreage, for example, in the
United States, 60%+ of land used,is tied up in cereal production for fedlot cattle, at 5% energy conversion, ie 20lb of oats and maize
etc to produce1lb of beef ,and all that agricultural diesel, the pesticides, herbicides and chemical fertiliser used for that 5%
return. Don’t get me wrong, I like a steak from time to time, but given a choice, I’d rather be mobile any time.
The question still was there, could we ever really make a totally renewable future happen?, and here I’d like to thank
JAG531@aol, he has got to be one of the worlds worst critics of bio-diesel, and that was all the encouragement I needed to set out to prove him
wrong. Western Europe is one of the worlds most densely populated areas, and yet with modern agricultural methods we are
literally disappearing under a mountain of food, even with 20% of our land on set aside. So lets look at Africa, arid to the north, arid
to the south but in the middle there is a vast belt, hardly any towns or cities, just green and more importantly, WET.
Population 611,000,000 (or 51.84 people per sq mls), Continental land mass 11,500,000 sq mls ( or 2,978,500,000
hectare acres ). The people of this land largely live in terrible poverty. Malnutrition, ignorance and disease are a way of life.
U.K. population, 57,065,000, (or 605 people per sq ml.)
Land mass, 94,215 sq mls,and lots of food. (Remember 20% set aside).
Here in the United Kingdom,(based on our IRS dispatches from refiners), we consume in the region of 40,000,000 MT of petrol and
diesel fuel per annum.Oil palm grows easily all over the African continent, needs little
water, being deep rooted, little fertiliser or pesticide, but boasts one of the highest oil yields in the world at 5000 kg per hectare acre.
So let’s do our maths.U.K. road fuel requirement 40,000,000 MT. Oil palm= 5000kg per hectare (or 5 tonnes).So we need about 8,000,000 hectare acres to produce all our
transport oil, or an area equivalent to 175.74 square miles, (The republic of Ireland being about the same size,)or 0.27% of Africa’s land surface. The spin off would be more than
enough palm husk to keep one or two power stations running. And for the locals, employment, health care, education and stability
Head and feet firmly on the ground the logistics of such projects on an international level are absolutely mind boggling, but no more
than “before the end of the century we will put man on the moon”, or the meteoric expansion of aviation or for that matter placing oil
rigs in the North Sea, the cruellest ocean on earth. Don’t forget also, the six billion or so spent policing the gulf, a doomed resource. I
wonder what 6 billions worth of agricultural equipment looks like?
So here we stand at the beginning of a new millennium, so many frontiers passed, the ages of the wheel, of bronze, of iron,
steam and petroleum, so many more frontiers to come and we are at the beginning of just one of them,
RENEWABLE ENERGY, and with all its pitfalls, logistic, political and maybe even religious, one thing
is certain, without oil-energy we will regress,and the last century may as well be written out of history as never having happened .
There is only one clear choice, the path to renewability. The task seems almost impossible, a rag tag bunch of individuals and a few
tiny but promising plants scattered around the planet, linked together by a common philosophy and the world wide web, largely
isolated in there own communities, but very slowly recruiting new members to there number. One things for sure, it takes a spark to
make a fire.
Posted July 2000:
Shaun in Maui, Hawaii - Since May 1998 I have
run four vehicles on 100% biodiesel, a 1982 Mazda B2000 pickup, a 1981 VW Rabbit
pickup, a 1979 VW Dasher station wagon, and my current car, a 2000 VW Golf
TDI. The Mazda is the only one not still on the road and that's because it
was in such terrible shape from rust (so bad that the bed was close to separating
from the cab), a main oil seal leak and parts were way too expensive ($36 for
one glow plug) and rare to find. I sold the VW pickup to a friend and it
now has over 20,000 miles on biodiesel, I sold the Dasher to a co-worker, and it has over 4,000 miles on biodiesel. I get all my
biodiesel from Pacific Biodiesel, who has been producing it since December 1996.
About a month after buying the VW pickup it started giving me problems with the flow of fuel, so I had the tank cleaned out and, sure enough, the biodiesel had done such a great job of cleaning out my tank that it almost totally clogged up the fuel tank fuel filter (the filter is so fine that it could be used as a coffee filter). The tank had to be cleaned out a couple times since, the new owner replaced the fuel tank filter with one that isn't so fine and he relies on the two fuel filters (a marine filter was added by the original owner, it's a great idea) up front, and it's running great.
I bought the Dasher in September of 1999 and drove it until March 2000 with just having to replace some of the rubber fuel lines.
In March I decided that the best way to promote biodiesel was to buy a new car. I have been driving the 2000 VW Golf on 100% biodiesel ever since (I'm proud to say that I have not put one drop of fossil fuel in it and am planning on using a vegetable motor oil as soon as I can find a source).
What's next, you ask? I'm going to see about getting the Royal Enfield diesel motorcycle. I also want to get the Lectra electric motorcycle and buy a solar photovoltaic system to recharge the batteries (I'll buy a second set of batteries that can recharge during the day). I'm all about showing people the practical uses of environmentally friendly energy options so we can move beyond the horribly polluting fossil and nuclear fuels.
If you, or someone you know, would like to have your biodiesel experiences posted on this page send us an email.
