Bio Diesel

2,357 Views | 27 Replies | Last: 6 yr ago by longeryak
clarythedrill
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Who all who own diesels are running bio diesel over the regular pump diesel? Not the type you are making yourself, but the stuff that is labeled as such at the pump? Up here in northern Illinois, the BP stations have a "Not a BP product" labeled bio diesel that I have been filling up with every other fill up. My Duramax seems to run really smooth with a 50/50 mix of it and regular diesel, but I haven't gone to it exclusively so no idea how it would run on a diet of only bio.

Anyone have any input one way or another? So far I like using it, but will stop if there are any long term negative affects, such as DPF problems from use.

PS, I am loving the fact that diesel is about 20 cents a gallon cheaper than regular gas up here for some reason. Bio and regular diesel are pretty much the same price, so nothing to be gained money wise from using one over the other.
locogringo
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I've looked into the make it yourself process. One of the negatives I can remember from my research is that the bio acts like a cleaner and will clean the inside of your tank and fuel lines. Sounds like a good thing but it ends up clogging the fuel filter faster than normal. Not sure of the bio at your pump is the same or not. Other than that I haven't heard any negatives on it, but it is also not readily available where I live.
clarythedrill
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locogringo said:

I've looked into the make it yourself process. One of the negatives I can remember from my research is that the bio acts like a cleaner and will clean the inside of your tank and fuel lines. Sounds like a good thing but it ends up clogging the fuel filter faster than normal. Not sure of the bio at your pump is the same or not. Other than that I haven't heard any negatives on it, but it is also not readily available where I live.
Loco, I have heard the same about cleaning your fuel system out. My truck is only a couple of months old, so not worried about that aspect.

I have also heard that a drawback to making your own is that you will have a hard time filtering out all the deposits that have found their way into your batch.
ghollow
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clarythedrill said:

locogringo said:

I've looked into the make it yourself process. One of the negatives I can remember from my research is that the bio acts like a cleaner and will clean the inside of your tank and fuel lines. Sounds like a good thing but it ends up clogging the fuel filter faster than normal. Not sure of the bio at your pump is the same or not. Other than that I haven't heard any negatives on it, but it is also not readily available where I live.
Loco, I have heard the same about cleaning your fuel system out. My truck is only a couple of months old, so not worried about that aspect.

I have also heard that a drawback to making your own is that you will have a hard time filtering out all the deposits that have found their way into your batch.
We heard the same thing but did not believe it. We took an 11 year old bucket truck that had spent most of its life idling and switched it over to biodiesel. We were going to trade the truck off in a few months anyway. After switching over, the truck seemed to actually run better and we never had to change any of the filters before we traded it off three months later. Only downside was that the truck smelled like you were cooking french fires all the time. Made me hungry.
1agswitchin4lanes
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I played with the homebrew WVO biodiesel around 10 years ago, then started buying commercially produced B100 biodiesel from Houston Biodiesel.

I had LOTS of restaurants willing to give you WVO. We had a filter with a water separator and were just putting small amounts in. Later we started brewing our own, but it was way too much hassle over buying it. Which is why we started getting the commercially made stuff.

I had another guy at work that was using it and we bought a 400 gallon tote and would fill it up from there every 3-4 weeks.

At the time I had a 98.5 24 Valve Ram 2500 and a Mercedes 350SDL that were both using a blend of B90-B100.

With modern stuff these days, I'm not sure I'd go over the maximum allowable. Ford is good for B20 with their 6.7L.

Not sure what GM has stated on their stuff.
Ciboag96
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Dinosaur lives matter
80085
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The hippie gas station down the street sells b100 and I frequently see the same work trucks there while getting breakfast tacos so it can't be too bad.
Bibendum 86
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Does bio still have problems in cold weather? When bio first came out, I recall that the City of Minneapolis put biodiesel in a few of their buses -- only to find out that bio gels at about 38 degrees.

Oops.
1agswitchin4lanes
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Untimed Down said:

Does bio still have problems in cold weather? When bio first came out, I recall that the City of Minneapolis put biodiesel in a few of their buses -- only to find out that bio gels at about 38 degrees.

Oops.
Mix with Kerosene to lower the gel point or run B50 in the winter.
clarythedrill
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I will have to look at the pump next time to see if the exact percentage is listed, as I do not remember seeing what it is at the BP stations. There are plenty of other stations with regular diesel to choose from, but my truck just seems to run much smoother with bio than regular. Of course it may be my seat of the pants needs to be re-calibrated also. MPG seems to be roughly the same too.
TSW2012
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I used to work at a bio-diesel refinery. It's nasty ****, will clean out your fuel system because it's super corrosive. A tank every now and then to clean it out shouldn't be an issue but unless you are making it yourself to save money I see no point. Especially on newer diesels. Too much to go wrong. Also commercially made biodiesel is far more likely to be off-spec than Dino-diesel.
clarythedrill
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TSW2012 said:

I used to work at a bio-diesel refinery. It's nasty ****, will clean out your fuel system because it's super corrosive. A tank every now and then to clean it out shouldn't be an issue but unless you are making it yourself to save money I see no point. Especially on newer diesels. Too much to go wrong. Also commercially made biodiesel is far more likely to be off-spec than Dino-diesel.
Good to know information. Thanks.
locogringo
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1agswitchin4lanes said:

I played with the homebrew WVO biodiesel around 10 years ago, then started buying commercially produced B100 biodiesel from Houston Biodiesel.

I had LOTS of restaurants willing to give you WVO. We had a filter with a water separator and were just putting small amounts in. Later we started brewing our own, but it was way too much hassle over buying it. Which is why we started getting the commercially made stuff.

I had another guy at work that was using it and we bought a 400 gallon tote and would fill it up from there every 3-4 weeks.

At the time I had a 98.5 24 Valve Ram 2500 and a Mercedes 350SDL that were both using a blend of B90-B100.

With modern stuff these days, I'm not sure I'd go over the maximum allowable. Ford is good for B20 with their 6.7L.

Not sure what GM has stated on their stuff.
GM says B20 max also, I believe all the big 3 say that.

I wunder what the potential issues are with running b100 in a factory truck (any of the big 3)? injector pump?


EDIT: My neighbor used to have a pair of those mercedes and would just filter the trash out of the WVO before running it straight....supposedly.
1agswitchin4lanes
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locogringo said:

GM says B20 max also, I believe all the big 3 say that.

I wunder what the potential issues are with running b100 in a factory truck (any of the big 3)? injector pump?


EDIT: My neighbor used to have a pair of those mercedes and would just filter the trash out of the WVO before running it straight....supposedly.
Yeah, the earlier 616/617 engines would run on anything, to an extent, but if you werent removing the water from the WVO, the IP would trash itself in short time.

This is why the Mercedes diesel market went nuts for a while, too many hipsters destroying nice condition cars and runnign them on Captain D's fryer oil. A untouched car had insane value for a while because it wasnt hacked up.
TXTransplant
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clarythedrill said:

TSW2012 said:

I used to work at a bio-diesel refinery. It's nasty ****, will clean out your fuel system because it's super corrosive. A tank every now and then to clean it out shouldn't be an issue but unless you are making it yourself to save money I see no point. Especially on newer diesels. Too much to go wrong. Also commercially made biodiesel is far more likely to be off-spec than Dino-diesel.
Good to know information. Thanks.


Ok...it's not "nasty ****". Most biodiesel is made by the reaction of oil with methanol in the presence of a base catalyst. The properties of the resulting biodiesel are dependent on a couple of factors:

1) The quality of the starting oil and the length of time the reaction is allowed to proceed to get good conversion. Start with good, virgin oil (like soybean oil) and you get a good biodiesel product. Start with ****ty waste oil from a fryer, and you get a lower quality product because it doesn't react as well. The more unconverted oil in the product, the more likely it is to solidify in cold weather and/or plug your filter.

2) The reaction has to occur in the presence of excess alcohol (usually methanol). Use too much, and you end up with a biodiesel product with a lot of methanol in it. Just like ethanol, methanol is corrosive.

3) The reaction occurs in the presence of a basic catalyst - something like sodium hydroxide (NaOH). Add too much catalyst, and again, you get a lower-quality product with a corrosive impurity.

The chemistry to make biodiesel is very simple. Product quality suffers when you get producers who don't know what they are doing, run the reaction with the improper ratios of reactants and catalyst, and then are too lazy and/or lack the knowledge and equipment to adequately purify the end product.
Kenneth_2003
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Untimed Down said:

Does bio still have problems in cold weather? When bio first came out, I recall that the City of Minneapolis put biodiesel in a few of their buses -- only to find out that bio gels at about 38 degrees.

Oops.
Gosh what a Charlie Foxtrot the morning A&M bus ops found that out!
Dr. Doctor
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Not all the processes are base catalyzed. But that is the majority.

I've toyed with the idea of making my own plant and using a different process that is not based catalyzed. And it would run 100% WVO. Can make better than virgin oil B100.

Just need a bit of pressure to run it (3k psi).

~egon
TXTransplant
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Dr. Doctor said:

Not all the processes are base catalyzed. But that is the majority.

I've toyed with the idea of making my own plant and using a different process that is not based catalyzed. And it would run 100% WVO. Can make better than virgin oil B100.

Just need a bit of pressure to run it (3k psi).

~egon


That's is correct. A catalyst is not required for the reaction, and it doesn't have to be a base. That's just what is commonly used (and would be a potential reason why a final product would be poor quality).
clarythedrill
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Thanks for all the info. I usually top off once a week, which only requires about 1/3 of a tank, and I go back and forth weekly between regular diesel and bio. I think I will continue this until winter, and then go full blown regular diesel due to the temps up here in northern Illinois getting pretty low at times.

If this BP product has an insanely high bio content, then I may stop altogether to make sure I do not surpass what GM calls for in the Duramax.
Jack Boyett
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TSW2012 said:

I used to work at a bio-diesel refinery. It's nasty ****, will clean out your fuel system because it's super corrosive. A tank every now and then to clean it out shouldn't be an issue but unless you are making it yourself to save money I see no point. Especially on newer diesels. Too much to go wrong. Also commercially made biodiesel is far more likely to be off-spec than Dino-diesel.
I work at a bio plant now. This is wrong. There may be some plants out there like that but it's got to be a super small minority at this point. When were you in the industry? Was it a real plant or a little mon and pop setup in an old warehouse or something? There were a lot of problems when things were getting starting the mid 2000s. It's all pretty well consistent now. The spec for fat remaining in the biodiesel is maximum 0.24% on a glycerol basis. My plant is generally around 0.15%.

The station does not have to label the pump if it's less than 3-5% biodiesel (forget the exact number). That's going to be almost everything you buy. They're going to label the pump if you are running a higher blend than that. You'll also know because it will cost more. No oil company is going to blend any more biodiesel than they are required to by the feds. We're selling biodiesel right now for $4.61/gal if you count the rins the oil companies have to buy from us. That's wholesale and before road taxes.

To TXtransplant: You can make in spec biodiesel out of any kind of oil including restaurant grease. We run worse stuff than that. Brown grease, FFA, etc in small quantities. In all about how well you can clean it up before the transesterification process. A triglyceride is a triglyceride. Just get the rest of the crap out first.

The reaction process that are running commercially in the country right now are mostly base catalyzed (sodium methoxide), a few acid catalyzed(sulfuric), and 1 or 2 plants that use an enzyme.

I'm not trying to toot the horn for biodiesel. It's inferior to regular diesel in almost every way. I wouldn't use any more than the manufacturer recommends, and I don't think any of the light truck engines are approved for more than 20% right now. The emission stuff that came out around 2008 really screwed up the ability of diesel engines to run bio. The only reason this industry exists is the renewable energy push from the federal govt.


TXTransplant
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Quote:

To TXtransplant: You can make in spec biodiesel out of any kind of oil including restaurant grease. We run worse stuff than that. Brown grease, FFA, etc in small quantities. In all about how well you can clean it up before the transesterification process. A triglyceride is a triglyceride. Just get the rest of the crap out first.


This is correct. I should have been more clear in my post. Waste oils have issues if they are not properly purified before being used as feedstock for biodiesel production. A triglyceride is a triglyceride - the issue is all the other crap that's in there (vs something like virgin soybean oil that is already purified).

But purification costs money. The impetus for using a lower quality feedstock is to save money. So, if a producer isn't willing to spend the money to purify the feedstock, they make an inferior product (just like the product itself needs to be purified to be good quality).
Jack Boyett
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That's all correct, probably 75% of the plant is devoted to cleaning the oil up. That's really the hardest part.

Honestly the actual volume of waste type oils that are used is not very high. I bet 95% of the biodiesel being produced in the country is coming from virgin soybean oil or animal tallows.
TSW2012
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Jack Boyett said:

TSW2012 said:

I used to work at a bio-diesel refinery. It's nasty ****, will clean out your fuel system because it's super corrosive. A tank every now and then to clean it out shouldn't be an issue but unless you are making it yourself to save money I see no point. Especially on newer diesels. Too much to go wrong. Also commercially made biodiesel is far more likely to be off-spec than Dino-diesel.
I work at a bio plant now. This is wrong. There may be some plants out there like that but it's got to be a super small minority at this point. When were you in the industry? Was it a real plant or a little mon and pop setup in an old warehouse or something? There were a lot of problems when things were getting starting the mid 2000s. It's all pretty well consistent now. The spec for fat remaining in the biodiesel is maximum 0.24% on a glycerol basis. My plant is generally around 0.15%.

The station does not have to label the pump if it's less than 3-5% biodiesel (forget the exact number). That's going to be almost everything you buy. They're going to label the pump if you are running a higher blend than that. You'll also know because it will cost more. No oil company is going to blend any more biodiesel than they are required to by the feds. We're selling biodiesel right now for $4.61/gal if you count the rins the oil companies have to buy from us. That's wholesale and before road taxes.

To TXtransplant: You can make in spec biodiesel out of any kind of oil including restaurant grease. We run worse stuff than that. Brown grease, FFA, etc in small quantities. In all about how well you can clean it up before the transesterification process. A triglyceride is a triglyceride. Just get the rest of the crap out first.

The reaction process that are running commercially in the country right now are mostly base catalyzed (sodium methoxide), a few acid catalyzed(sulfuric), and 1 or 2 plants that use an enzyme.

I'm not trying to toot the horn for biodiesel. It's inferior to regular diesel in almost every way. I wouldn't use any more than the manufacturer recommends, and I don't think any of the light truck engines are approved for more than 20% right now. The emission stuff that came out around 2008 really screwed up the ability of diesel engines to run bio. The only reason this industry exists is the renewable energy push from the federal govt.





Yeah I got out in '07 wasn't a small plant but because so much production comes from small plants I would be scared of the supplier any anywhere I buy.
akaggie05
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Just noticed recently that many of the stations around me are selling B20 now, up from what seemed to be B5 pretty consistently. Any reason for the sudden change? If bio is more expensive, why would they do it? Had a 2011 Jetta TDI that got bought back, now have an X5 diesel. Pretty sure guidance on the TDI was no more than B5 but will need to check on what they say about the X5.
P.H. Dexippus
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If someone claims that running one tank of B50 in a 2012 Ford diesel ruined their engine, are they FOS? I know the manufacturers warn not to go higher than B20, but from what I'm reading, B50 wouldn't cause any harm (other than potentially clogging your fuel filter).
Dr. Doctor
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My FiL's old neighbor used to garage make B100 and run it in his F250 all the time. Not sure of the year, but did it for quite a few years. Work starting getting more hectic and just didn't have the time.

This was up in NYC suburbs.

~egon
1agswitchin4lanes
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I think its more of a liability and to protect the manufacturers from dudes running straight unfiltered french fry oil or waste motor oil or trans fluid in their engines.

So for commercially produced biodiesel, its broken down using using methanol and potassium, and there's no french fries, water, bits of food, fat etc in the biodiesel mix. That is what makes bio diesel. Breaking off the esters off of the glycerine molecules. (Doctor correct me if I'm wrong, I'm just looking back at my Biodiesel Class notes)

The main issue is Billy Bob and Cletus making this stuff in there garage. No two batches will ever be consistent. Including "drying" the fuel. Fryer grease oil has large amounts of water in it.

So worst case scenario, Fords attorneys (and engineers) are able to say OK to a home brew 20% without any major issues.

I would say sure, you could run B100, but I wouldn't in my 6.7L
Dr. Doctor
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You can make oil mostly water free relatively easily. Get an old water heater, put a gauge on top and put a vacuum pump on it. Also install a bleeder valve at the top with the gauge. Pull a vacuum to 29 in Hg and you will get most water out at normal TX temps.

Do a couple of filtering and you can get 'clear' used oil.


But I would agree that commercially produced B100, that follows ASTM rules/testing is fine to run. A home brew with Cletus in their shed from used work oil they collected...yeah...


~egon
longeryak
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1agswitchin4lanes said:

I think its more of a liability and to protect the manufacturers from dudes running straight unfiltered french fry oil or waste motor oil or trans fluid in their engines.

So for commercially produced biodiesel, its broken down using using methanol and potassium, and there's no french fries, water, bits of food, fat etc in the biodiesel mix. That is what makes bio diesel. Breaking off the esters off of the glycerine molecules. (Doctor correct me if I'm wrong, I'm just looking back at my Biodiesel Class notes)

The main issue is Billy Bob and Cletus making this stuff in there garage. No two batches will ever be consistent. Including "drying" the fuel. Fryer grease oil has large amounts of water in it.

So worst case scenario, Fords attorneys (and engineers) are able to say OK to a home brew 20% without any major issues.

I would say sure, you could run B100, but I wouldn't in my 6.7L
This was my first thought.
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