Biodiesel is something that I never learned anything about, or care too. My neighbor (who is a big diesel freak) is doing the biodiesel route. I am just repeating what he has experienced. Steel lines and tanks is what he said.
Well yeah; so you just replace the lines with non-rubber lines. Not 'easy' but it's not that tough either.
97 cents verses 1.30 for propane. I don't know if the 33 cents is worth all the aggravation of cooking, stripping and cleaning bio diesel. Plus, getting rid of all the byproducts - waste.
That's just it; it's NOT that hard. I will admit that it is a lot easier if you purchase a ready-made kit, which can be anywhere from $800 to $3000 (which contains all the piping and hoses, a large and small 'reactor' (tank) for mixing, and instructions.
But even if you build your own, it's not that hard to do. My father and I used to have a biodiesel "reactor" and made the stuff for about a year or so. Here's the basic process:
- Put the oil in the larger 'reactor' (is what they call it) and water wash it (spray it with water and let it mix) for about 15 minutes, then let it settle, and drain the water. That gets rid of a lot of impurities right there. (Our reactor was 40 gallons.)
- Take a small sample of the oil, and add what's called the titration mixture to it from a graduated cylinder, or pipette. Note how much you add to get the whole mixture to turn a certain color.
- Match the certain color to the color on the titration chart, and that will tell you specifically how many grams of lye you will need to add to the 8 gallons of methanol to make sodium methoxide in the smaller 'reactor.' (NOTE: This is the step that everyone is worried about, because lye is very caustic and sodium methoxide is even more so. You just need to wear goggles, gloves, a smock and probably a 'doctor's' facemask.) This then gets mixed for a while - about an hour or so.
- Once the sodium methoxide is mixed, you allow THAT to be mixed with the vegetable oil. It takes a while; like 8 or so hours. During that time, you go do whatever you want. LOL
- At the end of that time period, after allowing for separation, you'll drain off the biodiesel until you get to the byproduct. After that, depending upon where you got your oil (which determines how pure the stuff was), you'll probably do anywhere from 1 to 3 'water washing' cycles to get rid of more impurities.
And that's about it. Yes, it's vastly oversimplified, but in all honesty, for every 40 gallons of biodiesel my father and I made, it took us probably about an HOUR of actual work, and most of THAT was standing around:
- ~15 minutes waiting for the water washing of the veggie oil to complete.
- probably another 15 minutes or so to take the sample of oil, add the titration mixture to it, and add the lye to the 8 gallons of methanol.
- the other 30 minutes is usually spent on the 'water washing' cycles
The ingredients are vegetable oil, methanol, and lye. (Which is the other 'tough' part - in many states, it's a bit of a chore to get initially registered to get lye. BTW, I would NOT recommend you buy a large quantity of lye without ensuring the local cops know what purpose you're buying it for. :biggrin2: I know this from experience. LOL)
When you're done, you're left with biodiesel and the byproduct, which is glycerin. If you've eaten ANYTHING from the store, EVER, you've eaten it (glycerol). You can give that to your pigs, give it to farmers, use it to fertilize your garden, etc. There's a bunch of stuff you can do with it. It's not hard at all to get rid of if you live in the country.
