Good questions Joe. Same ones I have been asking for a while. I have been talking with my fuel oil supplier and furnace manufacturer and I will begin to burn B10 next winter to heat the house. I will have to change a few o rings to prevent seepage, but thats about it.
He said they have been testing biofueled heat in a bunch of "test homes" locally for a few years now and they have only seen one problem. Several o rings begin to "seep" fuel after a while and need to be replaced with a different material to stop this. Most newer furnaces are already equiped with better o rings at the factory. He says that after inspecting the injector and fire pots on the testers, the biodiesel actually helped to burn off carbon and clean up the injectors and fire pots from when they were burning straight #2.
I have heard that if you just pour straight cooking oil that was filtered into an engine, it will begin to "coke up" or build deposits after a while, but if it is properly treated with lye and methanol, it will burn better than regular diesel. I've not tested any of this myself though. (I would love to start a biodiesel reactor soon though!) /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif
Check out this link....
http://www.nbb.org/askben/basics/
I think you'll find that there has been more research done than you think so far. It just isn't hitting the news as much as it should yet. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif
BTW - The problem with the NOX is being worked out. It's under the "emissions" heading on the page. Regular engines produce NOX too, just not as much as untreated biodiesel engines. Engines with engineering controls fitted should produce less NOX than regular diesel engines soon.
Oh and also, he says that he has several farmers that for the past 2 years will only accept biodiesel deliveries for their farming operations. These are big time operations running combines and tractors costing more than my house each. So far, no one has reported any problems to him that were generated from running Bio-D. I'm not trying to preach thats it's Gods answer to the worlds problems or anything...... It has it's problems like less mpg and stuff. I'm just throwing out info for everyone to chew on.