BAD BIO "D"

[JohnEd]

I think it was Sean that got stuck in Portland with a repair job and got hung up for a few weeks or so.  One of the added delights of his "stop over" was that when they finally finished his bus he discovered that his FULL FRIGGEN TANK OF BIO had gone "bad".  Now what bad means is up for grabs but rest assured it at least means the thing won't run.  I am looking into making bioD and i have been avidly reading and reading and READING.  Came across a tid bit today that turned my head....but first a question....wouldn't you think that copper fuel lines would be the classy way to go in setting up the tanks and such for a BioD still?  Would you ever be wrong.  BioD R E A C T S to copper and completely screws up the fuel.  Don't ask what that means, they won't tell me that but all the resident chemists say the same thing.  And furthermore, don't even think about galvanized or zinc.  Ho Boy!  How many of us has run a copper tubing fuel line or made a fuel line fitting kluge out of water pipe galvanized?  The stuff you pick up.

So Sean, or whoever, you may have shot yourself in the foot with your fuel lines.  Now the real heartbreaker is that the copper is still there waiting in ambush to frost your Chestnuts all over again.  They said that a copper line can be plugged in short order but it takes a while for it to work all the way to the tank.  So the real heartbreak is that your tank might still have been OK.  On the other hand you just might have gotten a bad batch of Bio.  Happens.  These brewers are storing the stuff for a year without adding anything but they use airtight barrels or carboys.

The process is so sensitive to this copper thing that a guy said his liquid heater probe, like you have in a water heater, burned up and melted open into the oil that was being heated.  That batch "failed" to process and the next three batches of 40 gallons each also went bad before they were "done".  Seems the trace of copper left in the tank by the burned up element was enuf to screw the pooch.  That is more sensitive than the "little woman".  Wow!

Soooooo Sean,

John

[Hartley]

Well, let me add to that.

SVO and WVO both will react with copper due to the acids contained or captured in the oils. I ran a test after seeing green trace slime in a clear filter in a generator fuel system and discovered that the oil has something that leeches copper and will turn it green.

The only proper safe materials then would appear to be stainless or maybe a teflon based tubing.

Waste oil and organically based metals appears not to be a good combination.

Bio-Diesel is converted using caustic solutions and it has always been my thought that once you add a caustic ingredient there is no way to fully remove the long term effects of that material. It will be entrained into the chemical formula and react to something somewhere down the line.

So... Then, The thought also occurred that the recipe and equipment needed to make bio-d is not far off from what is used to cook Meth.....And is nearly as dangerous.
So watch out for the DEA guys.. They do watch chemical suppliers for alerts on people buying lots of methyl alcohol and other chemicals. I have been watching too many CSI shows... Gads !

[HighTechRedneck]

The only proper safe materials then would appear to be stainless or maybe a teflon based tubing.

Waste oil and organically based metals appears not to be a good combination.

Bio-Diesel is converted using caustic solutions and it has always been my thought that once you add a caustic ingredient there is no way to fully remove the long term effects of that material. It will be entrained into the chemical formula and react to something somewhere down the line.

I am in no way an expert on WVO, but it seems like since it is that reactive, it would damage injector hardware and the cylinders/pistons/rings themselves.  Since there are a number of people that have been using WVO successfully for some time now, there must be something I'm missing here.

[TomC]

I'm a little ignorant here-why do you have to add those caustic elements to WVO?  Can't you just let it settle, filter it and run it straight (since veg oil ignites at around 650 degrees?).  I know here in L.A. there's a place that will convert your Diesel car to run on straight veg oil for around $1500.  On a Mercedes-like I have- they use a single tank system since the injection pump on the MB's are very tolerant to thick liquids.  Good Luck, TomC

[JohnEd]

Tom,

Way different animals...WVO is waste veg oil...SVO is straight(read virgin) veg oil...Bio is SVO or WVO that is processed into a Dino diesel like fuel that has the same viscosity as Dino and the same energy.  You take 100 gal of WVO and you might get 60 or 70 gal of BioD, for instance.  What you lost was refined out glycerin, water, free fatty acids from the meat and some other stuff.

Yes, you can get ALL of the LYE out of the oil.  If you don't get ALL the lye out it is called a bad batch.  Also goes for water content and methanol and FFA and Gly etc.  BAD Bio...BAD....BAD Bio!!!!

If you burn WVO you get the full shot of all that junk in your combustion chamber.  It varnishes the piston and rings and will "eventually"  lead to premature engine failure.  Now "eventually" must be a REALLY long time caus there are engines still going strong with hundreds of thousands of miles on them.  That is the "old" mechanical injectors.....not the electronics ones.  Seems "eventually" happens quicker with the new hardware and with those injectors going for a grand or less apiece, the allure fades.  Now one of the UP sides of all this, and it is my own surmise, BioD acts like a solvent and cleans an engine of varnish and other deposits.  Soooooo doesn't it seem that WVO followed by an occasional batch of BioD mix fuel would keep everything on track?  It also attacks rubber and and copper and zinc and other stuff.  WVO has a down side nobody talks about....it is heated to "way warm" before it hits the injectors and the oil/fuel is passed through the injectors to "COOL" them.  See a conflict here?  I haven't had my concerns explained away...yet.

I am getting all my stuff together to make BioD but I am a long way off.  Got plans and 6 55 gallon drums and a 1/2 horse pump and a place to set up and 40 feet of Black Iron pipe.

Add steel tubing to your acceptable materials for fuel line and some approved automotive plastic stuff( see NAPA).

Yes, lye and methanol are on the DEA watch list and I will be buying 55 gallons of Meth at a time along with at least 50 pound barrels of lye.  I expect to be visited by DEA and I will be appropriately ARMED and waiting for the "revonoors".  Armed with permits and documentation, of course, and if they don't believe all that I will invite them to enjoy a vintage (yesterday) glass of Bio Diesel from my very own "cooker".  An Alumni of mine recently retired as a head of a  major dept of the DEA and we talk once in awhile so I think I can survive all this fun.

I don't expect any real progress on this till summer but I will keep you posted.  Especially if I am RAIDED.  I will wear bib overhauls for the occasion.

John