Truck runs on vegetable oil

[southerngale]

A local Novrosky's owner converted his truck to run on vegetable oil. Watch this video... it works! He did it about a year ago and has put about 25,000 miles on his truck since making the conversion. He filters the vegetable oil from his fryers.

http://www.kfdm.com/video/index.php?bcpid=1138292619&bclid=1137896012&bctid=25220955001

[Ed Mahmoud]

Up until this model year, Volkswagen diesels ran fine on bio-diesel. Then, to meet EPA rules on particulate emissions, VW installed a fine mesh filter in the exhaust that trapped particles, and every few seconds diesel would be sprayed into the cyclinder when off the regular sequence, to vaporize and be carried as a mixture in the exhaust to the filter, where it would flash ignite and burn off the particulate matter. But biodiesel has a higher vaporization temperature than petroleum diesel, so in the latest VWs, bio-diesel stays as liquid droplets, some of it is forced past the pistons into the oil, causing a noticeable rise in oil levels, and the filter doesn't get cleaned properly.

Apparently petroleum diesel/bio-diesel blends less than 20% biodiesel are ok with the DPF filters.

[coriolis]

I thought that biodeisel requires almost as much energy input to produce as it provides as a fuel. I guess that's biodeisel made from corn or other plant material, rather than used cooking oil which already has been converted to an oil and provides a beneficial reuse.

[DanKellFla]

My friend converted his old mercedes diesel and has been running fine for a couple of years. He loves it.

[Ed Mahmoud]

My boss is invested in growing a bean, I think it is called jotropa, or something like that, in Equatorial Africa, where the energy received per square foot is high, that produces an oil that needs little additional processing to be used as diesel fuel.

In Brazil, also near the Equator, more of the countries growing offshore oil production can be exported, because conditions are good for growing sugar cane, which can be converted fairly easily to ethanol.


In Iowa and surrounding locals, much farther from the Equator, the economics would be unfavorable, as about as much energy is put into growing the corn, breaking down the starches to sugar, than making ethanol, except companies like Archer Daniels Midland make generous donations to both political parties, so ethanol is highly subsidized.

Ethanol also attracts even microscopic quantities of water, unlike oil, making it poorly suited for transportation by pipeline like oil is.


Older model diesels run fine on B100, it is the ones with newer emissions controls that usually can't handle more than about a 20% biodiesel mix.