Make your oil diesel

[brcisna]

Hello All,

(I did do a search here and didnt get any results,)

Has anyone on the board here, attempted to make their own diesel,from such sources as cast off cooking oil,say from resturaunts accumulated? For the small hobby/micro farmer it seems this may be a good fit if you have enough 'under roof' room to get your own diesel 'still' setup.
I have looked at a few Youtubes in regards to this very thing,and does appear to be plenty doable.
I am sure when all is said and done you will end up with some $$ in the materials to build such a setup,,,but would be a good 'when there is nothing else to do' sidleline thing.
I would like to find out what the actual BTU's would come from refined cooking oil versus actual diesel. It seems even if you didnt get the BTU's as per real diesel,,if the initial bulk product is free, who cares?
Any thoughts?

Thanks,
Barry

 

[Mark Page]

Sounds like more trouble than it's worth, but then I only burn about 40 gallons per year.

 

[travis potter]

A freind tried this all I know is his truck will not run now and he can,t find any one that will try to repair it. I have heard others have OK with this but I think the only ones making money are the ones selling the plans.

 

[sldva00]

I made my own until the restaurant I got my oil from closed down. Now, I can't find anyone to give me their used oil. I stopped making a little over a year ago.

You can buy ready made devices already set up for biodiesel. I put together my own refinery. Bought a 30 gallon tank with conical bottom to process the oil. Had a 50 gallon tank for washing it, and a 30 gallon tank (not conical) for final drying/cleaning up. Also needed pump, centrifuge and necessary plumbing. I think I spent somewhere around 2,000, don't quite remember.

My process:

1. Clean the oil (25 gallons in conical tank) by running it through a centrifuge for about 2 hours while heating with a water heater element in the pipes.
2. Mix methanol and sodium hydroxide to make strong methoxide base
2a. Amount of NaOH depends on oil testing
2b. Amount of Methanol was 5 gallons 1:5 ratio (methanol : oil)
3. keep oil temp. between 120-130f and add methoxide
4. Mix everything for about 1 hr maybe 2
5. Transfer to 50 gallon tank and let settle (day or 2)
6. drain glycerol that settles
7. Wash by adding water (5 gallons) via mist system
8. Neutralize pH with vinegar
9. Bubble wash (aquarium bubbles) for a day or two
10. Drain water
11. Let it sit for a day or two
12 Drain any excess water and transfer to 30 gallon tank
13 Do final centrifuge cleaning and heat to 120 for about an hour
14. Let it cool a little and pump directly into truck.

All my transfers were done with a pump, except the last one (step 12). I used 5 gallon buckets for that step. Had two buckets, as one was filling I would dump the other in the cleaning tank and keep swapping buckets until done.

My truck (98.5 Cummins) actually ran better on biodiesel, but got about 3-4 mpg less than diesel. I don't know about actual BTUs, truck was quieter and responded quicker when accelerating. I did have to change the rubber fuel line (FASS system) to one that was biodiesel compatible. If I could find another oil source, I would keep doing it.

 

[Sutol]

My car is 17 years old so I just dump filtered cooking oil and old sump oil in with the diesel. smokes a little some times and a bit lumpy starting in the frost but no power loss and runs sweet.

 

[Mechanos]

I did tons of research, made a couple of small test batches and began collecting the equipment to put together a processor. I ran into a road block before I'd spent too much money and abandonned the effort. The problem that I ran into was securing a reliable source of quality oil. Most of the resturaunts I checked with used hydrogenated oil or "shortening" which yeilds a final product with a higher cloud point. Most resturaunts also had contract with waste oil pick up companies and wanted me to take all of their oil or none of it. Most places produced more oil than I could handle. So, without a source for waste oil... the rest was kind of moot.

 

[George2615]

I only use about the same of fuel as Mark. Not worth my time, effort, and equipment costs to start making boidiesel. Years ago fast food joints had to pay someone to take their used oil. Now, since people started making their own Biodiesel they have started to charge for it.

 

[pycoed]

All you need to know can be found here:-

vegetableoildiesel.co.uk - Powered by XMB

Making biodiesel from waste oil requires a number of steps: settling/dewatering, filtering, measuring acidity, treating & heating with exactly the right amount of methanol, settling & filtering again & finally decanting off the biodiesel & disposing of the byproducy (glycerol).

Lots of people in UK doing this because of the price of road fuel here - currently
$8.341 per US gallon!!!

I just use new vegetable oil in my 4X4 (a Ssangyong Korando which uses a Mercedes 2.9litre 5 cylinder engine from the Merc 300D) & thin it with around 10% petrol for use down to about -5deg Centigrade. Power is the same as diesel & the engine runs a little smoother on straight veg. It retails for around 2/3 the cost of diesel at the moment.

Use of veg oil depends on the type of injection pump fitted, the greater viscosity of veg can break some pumps, so be sure you know yours is suitable if you want to try it. Lubricity is much greater than low sulphur diesel, so is kinder to the pump AS LONG AS THE PUMP IS COMPATIBLE with veg.

You can also (again in the right engine) use filtered waste vegetable oil thinned with 10% petrol, but if you go to the trouble of converting the waste oil to biodiesel then you can use that in any diesel engine.

 

[ishiboo]

I did tons of research, made a couple of small test batches and began collecting the equipment to put together a processor. I ran into a road block before I'd spent too much money and abandonned the effort. The problem that I ran into was securing a reliable source of quality oil. Most of the resturaunts I checked with used hydrogenated oil or "shortening" which yeilds a final product with a higher cloud point. Most resturaunts also had contract with waste oil pick up companies and wanted me to take all of their oil or none of it. Most places produced more oil than I could handle. So, without a source for waste oil... the rest was kind of moot.

This is the biggest thing, now that diesel is high, waste vegetable oil (WVO) is a commodity that restaurants are paid for, before many of them paid to take it away.

I got extremely interested in the process of running straight WVO, the collection of which is the same stuff as making biodiesel, but I'm glad I didn't get far into it - oil is hard to find and is now priced in DOLLARS per gallon.