Site Mission Statement:

For those of us who don't have time to wade through the muck of newsgroup postings and "desktop biodieselers" who post ramblings and cockamamie ideas on the newsgroup sites.  It seems that  there are lots of folks making home brews, lots of websites selling "snake oil" additive products, and there are many "experimenters" out there.  The mission and purpose of this web site is to give you answers about every time tested and proven phase of creating biodiesel.  We'll also get into the short-cuts and best designs for beginners to get started.

What is Biodiesel?

Biodiesel is simply a modified version of fat (chemically stripped of an "ester chain" to thin it out and remove glycerine) that can be used as fuel in any diesel engine without modifications to the engine.  Most of the biodiesel homebrewers on the forums use "waste vegetable oil" obtained from their local friendly neighborhood Chinese restaurants which have to pay to dispose of it anyway - so you're doing them a favor.

Collection

Collection is usually easy  - if you talk to the owner of the restaurant, more than likely, they'll put the used oil back into the small 5 gallon containers that it originally came in and they'll store them for you for pickup later.  Or, you can go around and suck the used oil from their outside drums with a portable pump. You can give them 55 gallon drum with a strainer inside and lid on top of it - that they can use instead of renting the oil collection dumpster rom a waste oil collection vendor. 

I'm currently using the "cubical collection method" I pickup the small 5 gallon cubicles and place them in the back of my Jeep CRD  on a piece of plastic and a few old blankets for absorption in case of an accidental spill.  I haul the 5 gallon cubicals back to my garage and let them sit in the warm sun on the black driveway for a few days to settle most of the water and tiny food particles trapped in the oil.  I then pour the oil into a strainer (frying pan splatter screen on top of a funnel) to take out most of the big "crunchies" left in the oil and let it sit further for about 1 week to settle any additional water and food to the bottom of the barrel. 

If the process sounds a litle messy - Yeah - you're gonna get your hands covered with some waste vegetable oil in transferring oil - so be prepared.

Why Biodiesel instead of Strait Vegetable oil?

This is the haunting question on the internet - Rudolph Diesel originally designed the first diesel and ran it on Peanut Oil.  Petroleum companies later modified crude oil to run in these engines and other modifications were done by engineers to run Diesel #2 fuel in them.  Seals, Gaskets, injectors were all designed and optimized for today's engines to be run on Diesel #2.  Strait Vegetable oil (Virgin unused peanut oil) is what Rudolph Diesel used to demonstrate his engine.

Using filtered waste vegetable oil (WVO) as a substitute for virgin Strait Vegetable oil is being done, but probably will eventually cost the owners in clogged coaked up  fuel injectors and unwanted deposits inside their engines.  Try this experiment - take some filtered waste vegetable oil and place a few drops on a piece of metal.  After 1 or 2 days, the WVO will form a gooey wax like crust that you can scrape off with your fingernail or putty knife in a noticable deposit.   Try to imagine burning the stuff and what the injectors or inside deposits on the engine will look like after a few thousand miles.

Waste veggie oil contains fatty free acids and minute particles of food and some waxes.  The fatty free acids are caused by the frying of food inside the oil, also as the oil breaks down biologically - with bacteria etc... there are other contaminates inside it.  Using acidic fluids inside an engine will eventually clog up your vehicles filters and potentially cause damage to the block of the engine. Special conversion kits are needed to pre-heat the SVO and

Beware of some of the websites claiming that you can add a chemical additive to your SVO to thin it out, little bit of gas, little bit of kerosene and other concoctions.  Experiment and have fun, but just be for-warned that you may run into engine problems in the future.  SVO or Filtered WVO alone are being run sucessfully and some people on the forums claim that they have several thousand miles on their engines.  Speak to a diesel mechanic that works on the engines instead and you'll get negative reaction (from most) about the deposits and gunk that SVO and filtered WVO leave behind. 

Personally, I don't have any opinion either way - do what you want - its your Car or Truck :If you don't mind going through a couple of fuel filters, conversion kit and possible engine headaches in the future.

I chose to create Biodiesel because many manufactures of Diesel engines are now starting to support it as a fuel.  Jeep Liberty CRD's come with B5 (5 percent Biodiesel) in the tank from the factory!

I'm running mine on 100% Biodiesel at this time.  The engine and fuel filter have been checked and is running flawlessly and appears to have the same power as it did when running petro diesel.