AltFuel Veggie burner (1 Viewer)

Kinda tech and a bit of chat.

Was working on a BJ60 today that has a veggie kit in it, took it for a short tour on the highway and through town. No noticable difference, just the french fry smell coming back through the windows.


I was very impressed by the simplicity of the system, no return lines, no heater in the tank. The unit had coolant running through it and also had a electrical heating element, so it was a on demand type of unit.

One switch and light on the dash, it does need to be flushed with diesel prior to shut down, it also needs to warm the coolant to the point at which you notice the needle on the dash start moving.

There was a switching valve and one suction line from a tank mounted in the back of the cruiser.

I would go this route, such a simple install, not sure if it would work in the more nothern communities since it does not recirculate and and the lines are exposed to the temperatures.


Rob

Drove by a landrover 110 or somesuch in Berkeley, CA today with lettering saying veggie powered...

Here's my plan for the BJ42--let me know what you all think.

Pick up an old ConFer or similar 40 series auxiliary fuel tank.
Find/make a coil to run coolant through, mount in aux. tank somehow???
Tap into coolant lines before and after the heater valve, run lines back to aux tank.
Get a temp sender and gauge to install with the tank to monitor veggie temp, to know when I can switch over.
Get a valve to switch from diesel to veggie. Question: best place to mount it? I was thinking of rerouting the diesel fuel line near as possible to the aux tank to minimize the amount of line where the veggie would be sitting after I switched to diesel, also simpler to have only a single long run of fuel line. Then... what about the H2O separator, other fuel line issues? (I have NOT looked seriously at the fuel line (or anything else) yet.).
Heated fuel filter (e.g. Racor) near the injection pump to bump up the veggie temp to what is needed for combustion (that way you get the best burn and you only need the veggie oil in the tank warm enough to flow...).

Problem: all the new gizmos have to be 24v...

All very preliminary, general idea, newbie etc. so any comments appreciated.

Diesel engines are beautiful things.

there has been some discussion about veg and or bio being in the same class of fuel as "purple" diesel. there is no tax being paid to the government so theoretically this "could" lead to a fine.

Seems to me that if you don't actively advertise it (no lettering saying "veggie powered") that the only folks likely to notice the non-taxed fuel are more likely to be in favor of it than against it... for now.

surely at some point big oil will convince some heartless bastard politician to make this an "important" issue...

or a cop or inspector that is overly righteous...

I am going to go this route sometime in the near future. I have done a lot of research on this, and IMO, the best system is Frybrid. www.frybrid.com. Chris is a very knowledgeable person about this and the parts that he makes are top notch products. If you peruse his site, you will see pics of his compared to other vendors. Yes, he does have some supply issues, but with such a quality product, you can see why so many people want his product. He does have a forum there also. HTH.

-a

While in Death Valley, i4c4lo and I met a guy in a Dodge Ram diesel at Ballarat. He had 100 gallons of used cooking oil and 50 gallons of diesel w/ a filtration system in a mini cabover.
I didn't smell McDonalds or anything - but I didn't smell that powerful diesel stench either...

he said the same thing mentioned here- that he had to start w/ diesel and then kick into the veggie oil when it was going. Pretty damn cool tho.

The time is coming. Fuel is on the rise here again.....close to $3 USD/gallon. Not much compared to European costs, but a lot for us. I'm definitlely planning on trying the bio...just makes for too much fun not to. I've been researching the johnny appleseed biodiesel reactor. http://www.biodieselcommunity.org/appleseedprocessor/

Looks interesting.

Ive run bio many times in my TDI Jetta and my diesel Samurai. I would never run veggie in either. Sorry, my vehicles are to important to me. I wont risk them when there is no reason to.

HZJ60 Guy said:

Ive run bio many times in my TDI Jetta and my diesel Samurai. I would never run veggie in either. Sorry, my vehicles are to important to me. I wont risk them when there is no reason to.

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Could you explain further the drawbacks of veggie oil?

Gracias,
B

One of the most important factors if using SVO or WVO is the veggie oil quality.
I ran trouble free as long as I got grease from people that had only cooked once or twice with it.
Ran into trouble after I started getting it used from restaurants. After that, I started consuming more fuel and having more exhaust smoke.
The cooking oil was extensivly filtered to two microns before putting in the vehicle and was always plenty hot b4 driving on it.
I had to drive a few weeks on diesel only to get smoke & fuel consumption back to normal. I was worried for a while there.
I finally got a better source from a restaurant that doesn't fry much food and changes it's grease every week regardess if they fried any food or not. No more problems.
The key is to get the best least fatty grease you can.

Diescipel said:

Could you explain further the drawbacks of veggie oil?

Gracias,
B

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FL said it well. Usually (generally speaking) when people speak of veggie they're talking about home grown bio. Usually they collected the used oil themselves and processed it themselves. Certainly that is a viable way to get the end result you want, but these newer TDI/CDI engines arent very tollerant of less than pure diesel. Now Ive gone and changed out my TDI fuel filter with a Catapiller version that filters much deeper than the 20 microns (or so) that the stock fuel filter did. I didnt do that becuause I wanted to put questionable home made bio in the car. I did it to be as certain as possible that I was getting clean standard fuel. Im not knocking people that want to make their own, Im just not one of them.

One of the problems with WVO is that it can be VERY acidic. If you go this route, you should learn to titrate and become very selective about your sources. If you source WVO that is very acidic then you should plan to use it to make biodiesel or hand it off to a buddy who makes bioD. If you get a sweet source of oil that titrates favorably, then go right ahead and settle, filter, heat, & burn the stuff! Diesel vehicles have extremely sensitive fuel injection systems and between the pumps, the injectors, and the lines, you can get significant erosion, pitting, & wear if you consistently run acidic WVO.

I am a huge biofuel advocate and my own personal preference is to use bioD over the SVO/WVO route. Happy motoring!

I was a proponent of doing/using a veggie system also but after being into bio for a couple years now also I won't do it. There is too much water and other crap in veggie oil that is difficult enough with bio, I couldn't imagine with a SVO/WVO system, and same thing here, after following the industry complain about too many issues with bio, again I couldn't even imagine veggie oil. Also, we had a former tech from Catipillar say at a major forum of ours that in 40K miles it left a residual deposit that was significant enough to cause significant engine damage and deposits even with properly heated fuel. A lot of local guys and guys in our co-op have not been happy with his comments and disagree with them but I trust a Catipillar tech personally.

So my own personal route is as much bio as possible, I brew at least twice a week usually and three of us are invested in our own little "coop" and we have hundreds of gallons in supply. We use an 80 galloon appleseed-style processor, which does have some nice advantages suchas great insulation (it will stay at 120 degrees F for days after the element has been turned off) but have built it into a much more heavy duty unit, with its own fuse panel, the whole unit/seetup on wheels, two pumps, and 1 1/4" ports added top and bottom and using a 1.5" diameter 220V hot tub pump for filling and mixing the tank with a pre-strainer built in. It fills the 80 gallon processor in roughly a minute? We also have a preheated grease storage tank. Even then, though I think our fuel would meet ASTM, many many commercial engine manufacturers, as technology only gets higher-tech, would be quite unhappy with even our fuel let alone much of the commercial bio out there today...

An appleseed, using many of the kits and designs out there, is great for the homebrewer but in my opinion is pretty inefficient and can be messy. Several local guys have brewed even thousands of gallons with them but give up after some time because they are inefficient and time consuming to use. But are easiest to build because they are weldless and can be built by anyone, and they are cheap. Ours could have been $500 with a kit, but instead we are more like $2500-$3000 into our setup I estimate. But it also blows most $6K setups (Fuel Miester, etc) out of the water and I think we could easily get $3K+ out of it if for sale on the market. A lot of local guys are in it as a hobby but it is time consuming to them... Our setup is quite large and industrial and is a great way to go. If you can use Land-Cruiser esque ingenuity it helps a lot in my opinion, and think industrial, and if you look at it like a $1500-$2000 investment (very doable) with larger diameter pipe and quick disconnects, then you will be miles ahead. I'll snap some photos of our setup. Your range, with jerry cans and other features can be quite far way, 30 hours for me (Sand Fransisco and back if I wanted all on bio) with 10 jerry cans and a full tank.. Andre

I have a system like Radd Cruisers describes, on an F350 (180 gallons of filter on the fly WVO). I have had very few problems with it. I have had it for about a year and a half and 50k+ miles and I am very pleased with it.
I also make my own biodiesel and when I have enough oil I can run without any petroleum fuel (I think that is excellent).
I just got my first FJ55 last weekend and I will be dropping in a diesel engine and running it on WVO and bio.
So, get ready for lots of questions from me. I have never completely stripped a vehicle and attempted to restore it but I have done an engine conversion with a 4.3 liter Chevy in my 4Runner.
Anyway, glad I found you guys (Thanks Jason).
Stasia

Great input and welcome to the board.


Never heard of the Acidic problems with veggie, are there any ways or additives to negate this problem?

Rob

stasia said:

I have a system like Radd Cruisers describes, on an F350 (180 gallons of filter on the fly WVO). I have had very few problems with it. I have had it for about a year and a half and 50k+ miles and I am very pleased with it.
I also make my own biodiesel and when I have enough oil I can run without any petroleum fuel (I think that is excellent).
I just got my first FJ55 last weekend and I will be dropping in a diesel engine and running it on WVO and bio.
So, get ready for lots of questions from me. I have never completely stripped a vehicle and attempted to restore it but I have done an engine conversion with a 4.3 liter Chevy in my 4Runner.
Anyway, glad I found you guys (Thanks Jason).
Stasia

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Titrate your oil and check the pH. There are places on the web which tell you the cutoff limits that are useful regarding whether it would be best to convert the WVO to bioD or simply use it for your SVO kit. I won't be using an SVO kit on my vehicles, but that's just because I am such a bioD advocate. Just remember that not all WVO is created equal. Even virgin oils of different sources varies in pH. Check out the differences between rapeseed, soybean, etc. You might be surprised at what you find.

Thanks, that was the info I was looking for.


Heard mustard seed is quite good also.

For the costs I will run this in a older BJ60 and do a long term test on the rig, also I will learn how to test acidity and keep a log on the oils I am using.

Rob

dieseldog said:

Titrate your oil and check the pH. There are places on the web which tell you the cutoff limits that are useful regarding whether it would be best to convert the WVO to bioD or simply use it for your SVO kit. I won't be using an SVO kit on my vehicles, but that's just because I am such a bioD advocate. Just remember that not all WVO is created equal. Even virgin oils of different sources varies in pH. Check out the differences between rapeseed, soybean, etc. You might be surprised at what you find.

Click to expand...

would like to see a pic or two of your set-up. I am in the process of putting together a more industrial version of a bio-processor and can always use ideas on how to make it more efficient.

thx
jc