I am doing a comparitive paper for college, and need to know if forced to change from petrol diesel to something else would you choose to modify your cars for SVO or go for biodiesel.

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87 300SDL 220K
85 300SD 218K
82 diesel Chevette 440K
85 subaru 4WD turbo
83 4.1L buick powered cutlass THE TOY

What does SVO stand for ?
What is the difference between bio-diesel and vegetable diesel... seems like both are grown ... ?

SVO is Standard vegatable oil, usually rapeseed or soy. only draw back is it needs to be deacidified and heated to operate properly.

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87 300SDL 220K
85 300SD 218K
82 diesel Chevette 440K
85 subaru 4WD turbo
83 4.1L buick powered cutlass THE TOY

You mean the fuel tank and lines need to be heated in order for SVO to work properly ?

What are the comparative costs associated with each of these fuels ?

What are the production values with regard to acreage needed to produce fuel to drive the same distance ?

What do they smell like when burned in a diesel engine ?

I voted for gasoline, Its not worth the hassle to modify the car to run on something else. Maybe I voted uneducated, what exactly is bio-diesel???

Biodiesel is, I believe, the vegetable oil and whatnot, with the modifications already done to the fluid to allow it to work in a stock system. Biodiesel's already out, usually mixed 80/20 with petroleum-based diesel fuel.

Again, I'm not sure on the specifics, except that you don't need to to modify the car at all to run on BioDiesel.

Also, what's the paper on, exactly? I wrote a paper comparing diesels to g@$$ers a year or so ago, if you'd be interested in taking a look at it...

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2001 VW Jetta TDI, 5 speed, daily driver
1991 Ford F-350, work in progress
1984 Ford F-250 4x4, 6.9l turbo diesel, 5 speed manual
Previous oilburners: 1980 IH Scout, 1984 E-350, 1985 M-B 300D, 1979 M-B 300SD, 1983 M-B 300D
Spark-free since 1999

You are, for the most part, polling diesel engine enthusiasts. For more meaningful results, I think you also need to post this in some other forum(s.)

Good luck,

I've been speaking with some other diesel drivers locally about trying to make BioDiesel an option for us. It can be ordered in gallon jugs, cases and 55 gallon drums through a half-dozen of so suppliers. If I recall, it's currently about $2.40 to $2.60 a gallon but it's not necessarily run full strength. It's usually run as an 80/20 (Bio/regular) blend with regular diesel so as not to require engine modifications - apparently the 'purer' forms of it degrade the rubber in the fuel lines - and I suppose to make it more economical. The 80/20 blend is available in a few markets, though not widely. Check out this web site for more info: http://www.biodiesel.org/

Even at the 80/20 blend it burns cleaner (less particulates - an issue where I live) than diesel. Also supposedly has greater lubrocity (lubricity?). The straight form (no blend) apparently smells like french fries cooking (mmmmm, drool, french fries...). It's possible to use waste vegetable oil to make BioDiesel - a process called transesterization. An oversimplification is to say that it involves heat, lye and methyl alcohol, but people can and do make it on their own. You can get the 'recipe' online doing a simple search. I'd think that among this group of DIYer's there would be someone who is into 'making their own'!

SVO requires separate tanks and heating elements on the lines to make it flow. You start the car on regular diesel and then switch over to SVO when warmed up.

Don't try either alternate fuel in your gas cars - only diesels!

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Joel
1985 300td (sold)
1981 280SEL (4-speed)

I make bio from WVO. It takes no outside heat at all in Florida. All it takes is lye, methanol, and waste oil. Also you can run it at any mixture 1% to 100% with no modification to the car at all. MB has all steel fuel lines except for what you see under the hood and a short section on some cars at the tank. At 100k miles you may want to inspect the rubber but otherwise no problem.
There is also someone on this forum in the UK who uses SVO with no preheat and has no problems. Cost to manufacture from WVO is about 60 cents US per gallon. If you can get paid to haul off the WVO which some people do you can make a profit by burning bio. Road taxes not included of course, and we always pay those

Rebootit,

How much BioDiesel do you make at a time? Does it take long? And, most importantly, how does your car like it?

Thanks,

Joel

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Joel
1985 300td (sold)
1981 280SEL (4-speed)

I make 25 gallons at a time. Pick up the WVO from 1 of 2 places real close by. To 21 gallons of WVO I add 4 gallons of methanol mixed with from 5-9oz of lye depending on the PH of the WVO. The mixture is mixed for 45-60 minutes, then left to settle out for about 4 hours when I drain about 3.9 gallons of waste glycerin off the bottom. Then let settle overnight and drain the final 8oz or so off. What is left is 21 gallons +- of pure bio. This is mixed at anywhere from 99% pure to 10% ratio with diesel. If I had a bigger tank to mix with and more time I would run 100% all the time in town. The car loves the stuff at any mix.

Rebootit,

I've read on a couple of web sites how others do it - I hope you don't mind me asking a few questions...

Do you filter, and if so, at what point in the process? I'm assuming you'd do this first to end up with cleaner gylcerine - do you do anything with that? Soap?

What sort of containers do you use? And is the lye and methanol easily obtained?

Inspired,

Joel

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Joel
1985 300td (sold)
1981 280SEL (4-speed)

I don't filter till I get to the stuff that goes into the car. 99.9% of the big stuff ends up in the soap. The rest is caught by a 5 micron fuel filter when pumped out to the car. For storage I use the mix tank as it is a small volume and right now is more a fuel additive than a primary fuel source. Lye is just plain ol Red Devil Lye, the drain cleaner. Found at most any hardware store. Methanol is bought from a race car building and refuel company here local. It is the most expensive part of doing this at around $2.50 gallon. The mixing tank was built for free out of stuff found "here and there" I use a plain old 1/2" drill and a modified paint mixer to stir held by a home made clamp. In the winter time when heat may be needed just to get the mix flowing to add meth I use one of those electric charcoal starters suspended in the grease that I found at Home Depot for $8.00. None of this is hard, just "horse sense" more or less. Buy the book "From Fryer To Fuel Tank" from amazon.com. It is how I learned and has all the charts and mix ratios as well as the how to to figure proper PH etc. I do not bother with the water bath or bubble bath to remove trace amounts of methanol. It gives the stuff a little extra kick and is fuel the way I look at it. As for PH levels what I end up with is very close to dino diesel so I don't worry about it.
Problems? yes I have discoverd a few. First of all you can get away with about 1/2 the methanol called for as long as it is above 80 degrees. If it gets into the 50's and you run bio with not enough (18-20%) meth it will put you on the side of the road with clogged fuel filters.
Add just a little to much lye and you just made yourself 25 gallons of soap and wasted $10.00 of methanol.
What to do with the soap? I use some of it to wash equipment between batches. Degrease my motor, and have friends who use it to clean their boats after grouper fishing. The rest I just wash down the drain. It is just soap and causes no problems for the waste systems.
Will also clean out all the junk in your fuel tank if you use it and you can expect to replace fuel filters, tank screens, and you should repalce all rubber fuel line sections before you start using it.

Thanks for the seminar. I've mulled over doing it for awhile but have assumed that it needed to be done on a much larger scale. Initially, my interest is in making it for use as an additive so I didn't want to get into any industrial scale projects. You make it sound quite do-able.

Also, thanks for the book suggestion. I'll get a copy.

Take care,

Joel

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Joel
1985 300td (sold)
1981 280SEL (4-speed)

I guess what I started to do was get some information as I am comparing SVO and Biodiesel as alternate non-foreign fuel sorces. What I did was created quite a bit of discussion, A good by product IMHO.
Here are somethings I've found out so far. First, you can use ethanol instead of methanol to produce biodiesel (reduces toxicity of process and is totally plant based). Second, in a mercedes with its robust IP you can run SVO with out modification, but only at 40 or above, and efficiency is lowered due to poor atomization. Third, I'm told it smells like popcorn. I will try and post some good informational links. http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_mike.html
http://biodiesel.infopop.net/2/OpenTopic?a=srch&s=465094322&lv=Y
http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_svo.html

__________________
87 300SDL 220K
85 300SD 218K
82 diesel Chevette 440K
85 subaru 4WD turbo
83 4.1L buick powered cutlass THE TOY