What is it about oils, palm oil, soy oil, Saudi oil (that makes regular diesel fuel), vegetable oil, coconut oil, etc., that fuel can be made out of them?

In a diesel engine, they get compressed and sort of eventually explode. Oils like that must have some special properties of some kind.

jeff

Simple. When really hot, oils oxidize. The only difference between diesel and palm oil is the flash point, and btu content.

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1981 300SD 512k OM603

They all burn.

They are all hydrocarbons

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Toblin

'79 300D, "Liesel von Diesel", 235K

I kid proofed the house....but they still get in

Kind of anyway, refine plants in a different way, using the sugar in stead of the oil and you get ethanol. It burns good, has less smog, and costs you about 30% in mileage and saves you a few cents per gallon at the pump.

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Junqueyardjim
Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important. C.S. Lewis



1983 Mercedes W123 240D 4 Speed 285,000 on the road with a 617 turbo, beautiful butter yellow, license plate # 83 240D INDIANA

2003 Jaguar Type X, AWD. beautiful, good mileage,
Mom's car, but I won't let her drive it!

Hmm.
I wonder if the pop pressures on the injectors could be lowered to provide more spray or raised to get proper spray pattern/ for a more efficient burn of vegoils...

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John HAUL AWAY, OR CRUSHED CARS!!! HELP ME keep the cars out of the crusher! A/C Thread
"as I ride with my a/c on... I have fond memories of sweaty oily saturdays and spewing R12 into the air. THANKS for all you do!

My drivers:
1987 190D 2.5Turbo
1987 190D 2.5Turbo
1987 190D 2.5-5SPEED!!!

1987 300TD
1987 300TD
1994GMC 2500 6.5Turbo truck... I had to put the ladder somewhere!

Raising the injector pop pressure is what some veg oil folks like to do. It makes the oil atomize better, which results in better burning. It also retards injection timing slightly. So some folks advande the IP timing slightly to make up for the difference.

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If you heat the oil to above 180F, the viscosity is about the same as #2, so the pop pressure will not matter. Regardless, you will still get less mileage/power if the BTU/gal is not as much as #2. For instance, Bio-D has less BTU per gallon than #2, so your mileage will be less.

To get a more complete burn, it actually needs to be multiple short injections, much like the piazo(sp) injectors that are being used on the new diesels. Mechanical injectors have inherent limitations.

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87 300SDL - 215K Miles !!
99 F-350CC Dually PSD - 190K
86 300SDL - 189K
All on B-100

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrocarbon

Oh, I forgot to add: A good part of your body is a hydrocarbon fuel source too! (Much more effort to extract than WVO, but true none the less.)

WVO IS PEOPLE!! /bad Charlton Heston line

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Toblin

'79 300D, "Liesel von Diesel", 235K

I kid proofed the house....but they still get in

Hydrocarbons burn in Earth atmosphere.

I suppose since potato starch is HC too, it won't be very long until we hear the "Idaho initiative to support home grown tater-mobiles."

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1987 300D (230,000 mi on a #14 head-watching the temp gauge and keeping the ghost in the machine)
Raleigh NC - Home of deep fried sushi!

Have you guys read here it takes so much dino(coal, diesel) to produce one gallon of ethanol that it actually loses all the gain in pollution reduction and may even add more to the pollution?
Bud

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1987 300D Turbo, 175k mi., 1998 BMW 323i Convertible, 1997 F250 4x4 7.3L PSD

Yeah, that's what happens if you use an inefficient crop (like corn) to collect the solar energy and convert it into sugar. It gets worse if you've exhausted the fertility of your soil and have to add chemical fertilizers, like we do for corn. It gets worse yet, if you don't modernize your farming methods to lower energy ones, something most corn farmers haven't done.

Sense a pattern here? Yeah, corn is about the single stupidest choice one could possibly make as crop to produce ethanol from. It is also the one most readily available and with the best funded lobby, hence all the interest in it.

Of course, this is off topic, and being a dieseler, I don't care much about what the ethanol contingent does. I'm more interested in plant oils .

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'83 300DTurbo http://badges.fuelly.com/images/smallsig-us/318559.png

Broadband: more lies faster.

I read a thing not long ago somewhere about how farmers usually alternate a given field between soybeans and corn, but lately have been doing extra "corn" years to increase the supply for ethanol production. I thought that was pretty dumb, since soybeans are an excellent base for biodiesel. But the subsidies make corn the better business choice for the farmers, at least in the short run. I don't agree with farm subsidies and think they should all be ended. Just keep regulations from getting out of hand and the market will sort everything out.

I don't like corn ethanol anyway. I like mine distilled from barley, maybe with a little rye and in Scotland or Ireland

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Whoever said there's nothing more expensive than a cheap Mercedes never had a cheap Jaguar.

83 300D Turbo with manual conversion, early W126 vented front rotors and H4 headlights 400,xxx miles
08 Suzuki GSX-R600 M4 Slip-on 22,xxx miles
88 Jaguar XJS V12 94,xxx miles. Work in progress.

Unless said farmer was receiving a hefty subsidy from the our money.

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1987 300TD 309, xxx 2.8.2014 10,000 mile OCI


Be careful of the toes you step on today, as they may be connected to the ass you have to kiss tomorrow. anonymous

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