I'd buy it but we don't seem to have it much here in Raleigh, NC.

That dispenser photo above is pretty neat.

Why is the Off Road diesel $2 more a gallon...I thought it wasn't taxed.

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1993 W124 300D 2.5L Turbo, OM602.962
2000 Chevrolet Cavalier, 2.4L DOHC
2002 Ford Explorer, 4.0L SOHC
2005 Toyota Prius, 1.5L

http://www.fuelly.com/sig-us/40601.png

I was wondering the same thing ... thats why i snapped the photo

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1987 300D 180k
1985 300SD 330k Helga
1992 300D Lola 269k- Sold
1986 325 coupe Bessie >300k Original engine(ODO Broke) sold
2006 2500HD Druamax Linda- Tows boat and looks pretty in garage thats about it

I run biodiesel when I know that it was made from WVO. I was baffled to learn that there was a private producer in Midland, TX (a long time oil town in the permian basin) that also makes home biodiesel breweries and sells them on the internet!

I'm sorry, and I know that I will offend a lot of people that have "chemical knowledge" that says otherwise but, making biodiesel out of virgin oil is about the most ridiculous thing that we can do for energy. We'd be better off as a country not growing anything at all on those farms and lining up solar panels and plugging in to them. We'd get about 6 or 7 times as much energy per acre than the net energy from biodiesel production on said acres. Thats a *****load more energy. To those of you that said that the farmers would make about enough to fuel themselves, their farms, and their buddies ... I concur.

Aside from from the net energy issue, there is the food issue.
Our biodiesel and ethanol production has driven up food prices - and not only in our country - in countries that were already poor and hard-up on food.

Also, I'm not for terrorists, but look at the stats we get most of our oil from the American continents.

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'82 240D 224K miles manual transmission
mods: wooden 4by4 bumper, EGR delete and older EX manifold without EGR port, glass pack muffler (cheapest replacement muffler), rebuilt bosch injectors with Monark nozzles

working on: aux electric fuel pump, coolant/fuel heat exchanger/filter head, afterglow, low oil pressure buzzer/LED

Fact or opinion? It is stated as fact, and if that is the case then I'd like to see some citations to back it up.

Again, if this is fact, and not just opinion, please provide evidence to back it up. If it is opinion, please state it as such. I have already given one example of a WVO based biodiesel production company that produces far more energy as fuel than they use. Here is another. An aquaintance of mine on the Ford-trucks.com board (screen name Fabmandeluxe) has a profitable venture in Idaho where he grows his own seed crop, preses the oil, sells the leftover seed mash as cattle feed, produces biodiesel from the oil, and then sells the biodiesel. All done quite profitably. And his operation produces far more fuel than "he and his buddies" could ever use.

And there you have put your finger on the real problem. Converting our food to fuel is foolish. The problem is that our means of production of biofuels is a decade or two behind the rest of the world. Our only ethanol production is geared towards producing it from grain. Brazil supplies something like 75% of their fuel needs from alcohol distilled from non-food sources of biomass. Leftover stalks, stems, leaves and waste from food production, grass, and all kinds of other biomass can and do all get used to produce alcohol for fuel. The catch is that you have to build ethanol production facilities that are designed to use biomass rather than grain. We haven't done that yet.

Most of our Biodiesel production is geared towards using soy as feedstock. Again, there are a lot of better non-food alternatives. Jatropa, rapeseed, switchgrass, algae, just to name a few - most of which can be grown on land that isn't fertile enough for producing food crops - land that is lying fallow.

Here's another idea that I haven't seen anyone else propose. We have millions of miles of roads in this country and we spend millions of dollars maintaining the 50 feet or so of right of way on each side of them (and another 50 foot strip between them on divided roads). We plant them to prevent erosion, mow them, etc. Why not plant one of the "weed" type of oil seed crops instead? We could grow and harvest the crop one or even two times a year (depending on local climate). It wouldn't require much more expense or effort than what we are already doing maintaining the existing right of way.

The upside is that it would produce millions of bushels of oil seed crop that could be sold for a very low price to biodiesel producers to more than offset any additional cost (compared to the cost of maintaining the right of way) and even a bit more to help states reduce the cost of right of way maintenance activities.

The program would more than pay for itself, and at the same time provide a low cost source of feedstock for biodiesel producers, who could then produce and sell their fuel for a price that is actually lower than petro-diesel - benefitting consumers with lower fuel prices.

Everybody wins and there is no negative impact on our food supply.

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1984 300 Coupe TurboDiesel
Silver blue paint over navy blue interior
2nd owner & 2nd engine in an otherwise
99% original unmolested car
~210k miles on the clock

1986 Ford F250 4x4 Supercab
Charcoal & blue two tone paint over burgundy interior
Banks turbo, DRW, ZF-5 & SMF conversion
152k on the clock - actual mileage unknown

that is actually an awesome idea. about converting the medians into farmland. its not being used anyway and that land sees plenty of machinery over the course of a year to maintain it. what would be the difference if it was farm equipment.

to back up my statements about energy use. just think of how many watts per square meter the suns gives and think about the time it takes to grow a square meter of soy. over the course of a year that's a huge difference in energy. just do a little research on the suns output, and read a physics lesson or two on energy. (I'm not trying to be a smart ass, I'm serious.)

also, i've heard about Brazil. Everyone needs to be doing that but, like you said though, its mostly scrap biomass. I lived in SF for a year and they collected compostable material separate from garbage. If everyone in the US did that then, one, we wouldn't be overfilling the landfills as fast and two, we could be working towards something similar to what brazil is doing. Too bad americans (for the most part) have slipped into a complacent attitude towards natural resources.

the "farmers and their buddies" comment was an exaggeration to prove a point. all in all, across america, biodiesel from virgin oil is a drop in the bucket when considering it from an energy perspective. although, the effort could be worth something if we used what would be otherwise unused land in the first place like your right of way idea.

to the OP, sorry it went so off topic.

edit: oh and I'm completely down with biodiesel production from WVO ... what else are you going to do with it ... burn it in your car? (I do sometimes)

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'82 240D 224K miles manual transmission
mods: wooden 4by4 bumper, EGR delete and older EX manifold without EGR port, glass pack muffler (cheapest replacement muffler), rebuilt bosch injectors with Monark nozzles

working on: aux electric fuel pump, coolant/fuel heat exchanger/filter head, afterglow, low oil pressure buzzer/LED

As an engineer I have already taken more than a few physics and physics-based courses and I've read more than a little bit about energy. My chem final was a paper comparing hydrogen, CNG, LPG, ethanol, and gasoline as energy sources for vehicles.

While it is true that the sun's radiant energy is HUGE in terms of watts, we do not have the solar panel technology to harness more than a fraction of it, or the means to mass produce enough solar panels economically enough to supply even a small fraction of our energy needs.

The most sophisticated and expensive solar panels we can produce (even in limited quantities) only convert about 40% of the solar energy falling on them to electricity. Less expensive (though still pretty expensive) mass produceable units are more on the order of 20% efficient. The electricity produced is DC which has to be converted to AC for long distance transmission. Due to the losses of approximately 20% in the conversion process the net efficiency ends up being more like 15%.

Given the high cost to produce and maintain them, and their low efficiency, solar arrays just aren't practical as a mass energy source. Even if they were, covering HUGE amounts of land with them would also have a significant environmental impact of its own - due to the fact that the energy that normally would be warming the soil wouldn't be - it would be absorbed and diverted to electricity production instead. There just ain't no such thing as a free lunch.

Through tax breaks and incentives the government - at all levels (Federal, State, and Local) - should be encouraging the building of biofuel production facilities that use waste biomass as feedstock. That is what the Brazilian government did years ago, and why they are so far ahead of us in this area. Instead our governmental bodies are obstructing the building and development of these kinds of facilities by requiring extensive environmental impact studies, lengthy if not insurmountable permitting processes, and taxation. Bio fuels alone aren't the whole answer by themselves, but if done right they could be a significant component of the answer...

__________________
1984 300 Coupe TurboDiesel
Silver blue paint over navy blue interior
2nd owner & 2nd engine in an otherwise
99% original unmolested car
~210k miles on the clock

1986 Ford F250 4x4 Supercab
Charcoal & blue two tone paint over burgundy interior
Banks turbo, DRW, ZF-5 & SMF conversion
152k on the clock - actual mileage unknown

the last sentence of your last post really summarizes my whole shtick.

we don't have to make only electrical energy. nor do we have to (nor should we) have fields of solar panels all over the place.

BUT, this is the research i did. the average gallon of biodiesel works out to about 140 million joules. a very generous estimate of production per acre is about 100 gallons (the highest i read was actually 64 gallons). lets say we harvest 2x per year (can we do that? I don't know, but lets say we can). thats an annual 7 million joules per sq. meter. that works out to about .2 watts per square meter.

average annual insolation for the entire earth's surface is 250 watts per sq. meter. lets take that down to 100 watts for simplicity. then lets take that down to the 15% that you were saying we'd get in electricity (AC) after its all said and done with the cheapo solar panels. 15Watts - thats still 75 times greater than a square meter of biodiesel crops yields and thats harvesting twice per year!

Don't get me wrong, I love Biodiesel! I know we can't have solar panels everywhere but that just gets me thinking. We can have them on our roofs. And little biodiesel processors in our back yards! Hell yeah.

__________________
'82 240D 224K miles manual transmission
mods: wooden 4by4 bumper, EGR delete and older EX manifold without EGR port, glass pack muffler (cheapest replacement muffler), rebuilt bosch injectors with Monark nozzles

working on: aux electric fuel pump, coolant/fuel heat exchanger/filter head, afterglow, low oil pressure buzzer/LED

Very convincing argument. IF covering enough acres with solar panels were feasible. But it isn't. Biodiesel is something we can do NOW with the tech we already have, and without anywhere near the infrastructure investment of acres of solar panels.

But I do agree that solar has its part to play. As do wind farms, and tidal generators, and hydro electric, and ethanol, and CNG, and LPG (both of which we have in HUGE quantities), and hybrids, and EVERY OTHER ENERGY SOURCE besides petroleum. Someone pointed out that only a fraction of our petroleum comes from the middle east and a lot of it comes from the Americas. I say SO WHAT? If 10% goes to the middle east and 25% goes to Hugo Chavez that's still 35% of it going to our enemies. I'd like to see it at 0% on both counts.

I want to see America become energy independant, and the sooner the better. But the truth is I don't exactly get a warm and fuzzy about the percentage of my petro dollar that goes to good ol' AMERICAN Big Oil Companies either. They have a strangle hold on all of us and they charge whatever they want for whatever reason they care to dream up, or even make up (can you say artificial shortage?). Just because they can. And they know we will pay whatever they want to charge - because we have no other choice. I'm all for anything that will give us more of a choice.

__________________
1984 300 Coupe TurboDiesel
Silver blue paint over navy blue interior
2nd owner & 2nd engine in an otherwise
99% original unmolested car
~210k miles on the clock

1986 Ford F250 4x4 Supercab
Charcoal & blue two tone paint over burgundy interior
Banks turbo, DRW, ZF-5 & SMF conversion
152k on the clock - actual mileage unknown

Hmmmmmmm, I think we may have discovered a couple more members of this forum who have more than just pretty faces when it comes to Physical Chemistry, Combustion & maybe Chemical Engineering/Industrial Chem! Great to see a intelligent discussion by 2 people who are passionate as well as intellectual when it comes to the area of alternate energy sources.

We may need to leave Sasol (oil from coal) and oil sands/shale out of the discussion for now!!

Down here the most promising thing at the moment is "Hot Rocks" geothermal energy for electricity. Its a green version of nuclear power, the granite a few thousand feet under the ground is red hot from radio active decay, just pump water down there and up comes steam!!

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Grumpy Old Diesel Owners Club group

I no longer question authority, I annoy authority. More effect, less effort....

1967 230-6 auto parts car. rust bucket.
1980 300D now parts car 800k miles
1984 300D 500k miles
1987 250td 160k miles English import
2001 jeep turbo diesel 130k miles
1998 jeep tdi ~ followed me home. Needs a turbo.
1968 Ford F750 truck. 6-354 diesel conversion.
Other toys ~J.D.,Cat & GM ~ mainly earth moving

i run b75 year round with a chemical additive to help lower the gelling point to 20F and fungicide to kill algae. have never had a problem. except i clogged prefilter when it was 10f outside. but untill dead animal fuel goes up we bio fuel dealers are getting our aXX kicked the cost to make it meet astm standards are only breake even point, some places are only producing at 10% cap. what does this tell you, people dont care about polution at this time they have to eat cut cost survive for another rd of recession and i dont blame any one for trying to survive . i drive my diesels because it cost me less to burn veg oil and heat with it.

i would run bio if i could find it for sale locally...