running your car on vegtable oil

discomania said:

Gas oil or 35sec oil is 2.00-5.00cSt - so is ULSD from the pump. Now I know that light fuel oil is 250sec and it's viscosity is about 8cSt - Corn oil at 80°C is 10.98cSt so that is greater than 250sec!

I don't have the figures in the "Little Black Book" for Rape Seed oil at 84°C however I do have almost all the other oils from 35° - 180°. So lets take Canola - Canola oil at 160°C is 4.29 cSt. Of the cheaper oils, it looks like Corn oil would be the most suitable oil as it has the lowest viscosity of them all at 95° of 8.56 - the best being Walnut oil at 8.21 - however, generally these are all quite high - so some mixing with DERV would be required to bring it down but it may end up more DERV than oil.

This is not really something that is ever encountered in a normal diesel engine but I wonder how hot a Bosch VE pump could handle pre-heated oil going into it. From about 145°C all oils are within the correct viscosity range but that is blinking hot - if that leaked out and sprayed over a red hot manifold you could be fairly sure of a good fire risk. At that all your fuel lines would need to be high temp stuff and you would need an fuel cooler on the return side as you couldn't end up with a tank of red hot oil sloshing about - the sender, among other things would melt. At this is sounds more like a mad experiment.

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No one that i know heats any hotter than coolant temp - they generally start and stop on dino, and, when the motor is up to temp, manually swap (solenoid valves) to run the veg oil through a flat plate heat exchanger in parallel with the heater matrix.

I make bio for our 300tdi daily driver, as the savings from running on wvo would be cancelled out by then having to have a modified vehical policy (ie i keep the car stock, and modify the fuel) but the 101 is already on a modified policy, so, when i get around to it, ill put a secondary tank on that.

Indeed, ill probably install a webasto engine preheater, running on kerosene, so maybe not even bother with the diesel tank.

I assume your posted data is correct - again, i have a personal friend who has done about 8 years on a PD VAG engine so i can only conclude that the level of difference in viscosity difference makes no odds. Well, it certainly hasnt in his motor and im confident enough that it wont in my bosch driven 101. I spent a little time looking at tables of viscosities - your comment said veg was double or triple, but these things are still relative - i mean there were things on the tables i was looking at that you would still think of as pretty fluid, and they were tens or even hundreds of multiples out. I mean, if it was 3% out, im sure people would say that was unacceptable. 1%? 0.1%? I wonder how all these people who do manage to drive about on veg oil do it?

People are very quick to jump in with "it will break your car" - which it will, if youre a mug about it - if you take care and pay attention, then.... well all can repeat is i know (in real life, not just on forums - like i say, im keen enough to go to biofuel meets) people who have had long term success.

Sometimes (on the bio forums) someone will ask a question about how to fix their indicators / wipers / car radio, and ts rare that the comment does not come up "That will be the bio..." in mockery of those who things it breaks anything its within meters of.

Really, im not even sure why im getting sucked in to this one - if you want to believe that it will break your car, then thats fine with me. If you want to believe people on a forum who probably have no real experience in the area, but are just relaying what theyve heard elsewhere, then, again, i guess it makes no difference to my life.

If youre really interested, there are a uk forums - http://www.biopowered.co.uk is more technical, but with less traffic. http://www.vegetableoildiesel.co.uk is busier, but also has more noise.

One thing I've always wondered about making your own biodiesel is what do you do with the by-products? Forgive my ignorance but don't you end up with glycerine and other stuff?

Marmaduke said:

One thing I've always wondered about making your own biodiesel is what do you do with the by-products? Forgive my ignorance but don't you end up with glycerine and other stuff?

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There's no single clear pathway. For a while I used to take it to someone who further processed it - they would do somewhat more advanced chemistry on it to split off the free fatty acid component from the glycerol - they would sell the glycerol on to "industry" as it's a precursor for a load of things. The ffas they would run an acid catalysed reaction on to make further biofuel. He sold it to road transport companies.

Then for a while I took it to a local anerobic digestion plant. It's a good feedstock for them. But then they started charging so...

For a while I was mixing it with sawdust and making bricketts. Burns real fierce if you get it right. At some point I may design a proper furnace for glycerol, as it's a cheap fuel if you can get it right.

I've not made any for about a year (I knew I wouldn't be able to for a while so made sure all my tanks were completely full) so I'll have to see what the best plan is when I start again - which needs to be pretty soon, as I'm running out of bio, and running out of veg storage space.

(we are using way less fuel this year anyway, as my partner is on maternity, and I work from home anyhow - I think the 101 got 20 miles between Mots last year... and we've gone from 15k to more like 5 in the disco...)

julianf said:

There's no single clear pathway. For a while I used to take it to someone who further processed it - they would do somewhat more advanced chemistry on it to split off the free fatty acid component from the glycerol - they would sell the glycerol on to "industry" as it's a precursor for a load of things. The ffas they would run an acid catalysed reaction on to make further biofuel. He sold it to road transport companies.

Then for a while I took it to a local anerobic digestion plant. It's a good feedstock for them. But then they started charging so...

For a while I was mixing it with sawdust and making bricketts. Burns real fierce if you get it right. At some point I may design a proper furnace for glycerol, as it's a cheap fuel if you can get it right.

I've not made any for about a year (I knew I wouldn't be able to for a while so made sure all my tanks were completely full) so I'll have to see what the best plan is when I start again - which needs to be pretty soon, as I'm running out of bio, and running out of veg storage space.

(we are using way less fuel this year anyway, as my partner is on maternity, and I work from home anyhow - I think the 101 got 20 miles between Mots last year... and we've gone from 15k to more like 5 in the disco...)

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Thanks for the insight, what's this 'washing' term I hear about then?

Marmaduke said:

One thing I've always wondered about making your own biodiesel is what do you do with the by-products? Forgive my ignorance but don't you end up with glycerine and other stuff?

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I used to mix the glycerine with chainsaw shavings and make fire-logs. It was a good clean green fuel.

Depends how much you make but... it is basically soap - it is water soluble - drain.

I don’t make Bio anymore or use SVO and when I do it is just out of badness – my time is too precious and I only did it as I generally I liked the idea of recycling the veg oil into fuel as at the time I started doing it DERV was about the same price as made bio and that was with free oil!

Marmaduke said:

Thanks for the insight, what's this 'washing' term I hear about then?

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Washing is the removal of any excess methanol, soap and any impurities. YouTube videos will show the process. It was a good way of doing it as water is free and it can be done quite aggressively to ensure a good wash.

julianf said:

No one that i know heats any hotter than coolant temp - they generally start and stop on dino, and, when the motor is up to temp, manually swap (solenoid valves) to run the veg oil through a flat plate heat exchanger in parallel with the heater matrix.

I make bio for our 300tdi daily driver, as the savings from running on wvo would be cancelled out by then having to have a modified vehicle policy (ie i keep the car stock, and modify the fuel) but the 101 is already on a modified policy, so, when i get around to it, ill put a secondary tank on that.

Indeed, ill probably install a webasto engine preheater, running on kerosene, so maybe not even bother with the diesel tank.

I assume your posted data is correct - again, i have a personal friend who has done about 8 years on a PD VAG engine so i can only conclude that the level of difference in viscosity difference makes no odds. Well, it certainly hasnt in his motor and im confident enough that it wont in my bosch driven 101. I spent a little time looking at tables of viscosities - your comment said veg was double or triple, but these things are still relative - i mean there were things on the tables i was looking at that you would still think of as pretty fluid, and they were tens or even hundreds of multiples out. I mean, if it was 3% out, im sure people would say that was unacceptable. 1%? 0.1%? I wonder how all these people who do manage to drive about on veg oil do it?

People are very quick to jump in with "it will break your car" - which it will, if you're a mug about it - if you take care and pay attention, then.... well all can repeat is i know (in real life, not just on forums - like i say, I'm keen enough to go to biofuel meets) people who have had long term success.

Sometimes (on the bio forums) someone will ask a question about how to fix their indicators / wipers / car radio, and ts rare that the comment does not come up "That will be the bio..." in mockery of those who things it breaks anything its within meters of.

Really, I'm not even sure why I'm getting sucked in to this one - if you want to believe that it will break your car, then that's fine with me. If you want to believe people on a forum who probably have no real experience in the area, but are just relaying what they've heard elsewhere, then, again, i guess it makes no difference to my life.

If you're really interested, there are a UK forums - http://www.biopowered.co.uk is more technical, but with less traffic. http://www.vegetableoildiesel.co.uk is busier, but also has more noise.

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Neither do I, as the coolant system is the best source of more or less free heat, rather than running some electric or other system to create the heat. It makes sense just to use coolant and to be fair you can get some pretty high temps from the coolant water.

You are making bio, so really none of this post or information directly relates to you because bio, if made properly, is a totally different animal.

Your friend’s 1.9PD engine is a unit injector, I made a comment a few posts ago that TD5’s are probably about best for bio, and I fairly similarly apply that to SVO too. I would want to make sure the mechanical pump was looked after by batching the SVO and getting viscosities fairly close. But we are talking Land Rover’s here and generally about injection pumps.

You are taking my posts incorrectly – you have a hostility towards my posts and it is unfounded because you are not reading this thread properly. Go back to page 13 and read the thread again properly. Also, you sucked yourself in, you came back with more questions and incorrect assumptions. In almost every post since page 13 I have been giving information on how it could be made to work well, hell I even explained how I used to run my 300tdi on the stuff! So do you think I am sitting on one side of the camp saying DON’T DO IT? Because if you read my posts and retained what had been written, you would know I don’t sit on that side of the camp.

I am not saying don’t do it, where did I say this? I have not said “it will break”, others have said this, some have questioned this and I have then used my knowledge of this subject to post some facts, mechanical engineering knowledge and other information pertaining to the use of Bio/SVO. Wammers for example said “Using straight SVO will over time knacker your injection pump” and left it at that. He gave no explanation and a few people asked why. Now, he is right, he is 100% right and I challenge anyone to contest that. However the discussion then went onto mitigation measures to improve the longevity of injection components – after all they will all fail one day, it’s just how soon.

I understand you are trying to understand things here, so it’s a big learning curve for you just now and it is good to question, that is how you will learn, but you ought not to be so hostile. I don’t really care if people go and put SVO in their engines and they fail – it would be a shame if someone did it thinking all would be OK and didn't take care and they did run into issues - I do care if people do things without knowing the risks and then taking an uncalculated gamble. When I was a student I had a drawer of 3 Lucas CAV injections pumps – bought them up for £40 each so I had spares as I knew I was trashing them with bio – it was calculated that I still saved a lot.

You ask sarcastically, “I wonder how all these people who do manage to drive about on veg oil do it?” Well, equally sarcastic answer: They get oil, tip it into their tank and drive. It will work and does work, again, read the posts properly. Should this be done with every variant of fuel injection systems? Will all the fuel injection systems last well? Will all systems work well on it without any negative effect? The answer to all of these is no and I have given a little insight as to why. That was all this whole pint of the last couple of days posting, was to provide information to those who want to do it - not to say don't do it - but certainly to educate.

Julian, you have shown yourself not to be knowledgeable enough in many aspects of this subject, you lack understanding so don’t finish your post in an all knowing manner suggesting that people on the forum have no real experience but then giving us a link to a bio diesel forum (full off more people who have no real experience probably!).

discomania said:

“Using straight SVO will over time knacker your injection pump”

They get oil, tip it into their tank and drive. It will work

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I think those two comments sum up why these threads generally end in acrimony.

The comments usually fail to take into account the wide range of reasons people may, or may not, wish to used vegetable oil or bio. And the wide range of vehicles, and people's equally differing requirements and expectation of those vehicles.

A builder friend of mine ran an old Passat estate, which he had bought for a few hundred quid, and was ideal for running his tools around locally. He used to occasionally buy drums of cooking oil from Costco when fuel prices were high, and tip them straight into his tank using a funnel. After a few years, it knackered the engine, he weighed the car in, and bought another one.

Someone else may have a cherished vehicle, which they have spent a lot of money and time on, only do a few miles a year in, and wish to keep for a long time. For them, the trouble and risks of making bio, or using neat veg oil, will in no way be sensible.

The same answers, while correct in themselves, are unlikely to please all questioners.

Turboman said:

I think those two comments sum up why these threads generally end in acrimony.

The comments usually fail to take into account the wide range of reasons people may, or may not, wish to used vegetable oil or bio. And the wide range of vehicles, and people's equally differing requirements and expectation of those vehicles.

A builder friend of mine ran an old Passat estate, which he had bought for a few hundred quid, and was ideal for running his tools around locally. He used to occasionally buy drums of cooking oil from Costco when fuel prices were high, and tip them straight into his tank using a funnel. After a few years, it knackered the engine, he weighed the car in, and bought another one.

Someone else may have a cherished vehicle, which they have spent a lot of money and time on, only do a few miles a year in, and wish to keep for a long time. For them, the trouble and risks of making bio, or using neat veg oil, will in no way be sensible.

The same answers, while correct in themselves, are unlikely to please all questioners.

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Exactly.

I have done it, I used to love messing about making Bio Diesel and running it on SVO - there was something strangely satisfying about tipping it into the tank and driving off knowing I was running on this fuel. Occasionally if I am at Costco I will buy 20 litres and bung it into the Landy - I do it when I know I have over half a tank of DERV and only in the warmer months, I would not do it now until mid/late spring - Bio I would put in pretty much all year long but not when expecting cold cold weather as cold starts were not always as good. Using too much SVO at this time of the year I know the governor will hunt a little as it struggles with the heavier oil - I also know at this point that the lubricity of the oil has been reduced and the injection pump will be subject to increased friction and therefore wear - it's like a clutch, every time you use it you damage the plate, we know that, some drive carefully, some people sit on hills slipping the clutch to hold the vehicle - they get away with it but we know that clutch will give up the ghost far earlier.

My attitude is go for it - I would not tell anyone not to - but I would suggest they read the facts and consider them before they go for it and make sure they are aware of the risks. Julian decided for some reason I was against it and thought I believed the skies would fall down if we do it but he misinterpreted my information sharing as preaching of fire and brimstone.

discomania said:

Julian decided for some reason I was against it and thought I believed the skies would fall down if we do it but he misinterpreted my information sharing as preaching of fire and brimstone.

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I quoted your post, addressed the quote, and then moved on. My error, or possibly yours, was in the lack of distinction between the text addressed at your post, and the general follow on.

You have, however, given it this bit -

discomania said:

Julian, you have shown yourself not to be knowledgeable enough in many aspects of this subject, you lack understanding so don’t finish your post in an all knowing manner suggesting that people on the forum have no real experience but then giving us a link to a bio diesel forum (full off more people who have no real experience probably!).

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I will not pretend to know everything. As you pointed out, at 85c, there are differences in viscosity between svo and dino, in contrast to my suggestion previously. I went on to query if this difference was of a large enough factor.

I would ask you to fortify your claim of "shown yourself not to be knowledgeable enough" and "lack understanding" as, in my mind, it seems like youre saying "talking ****", which i honestly do not believe, so would challenge you to furnish me with detail, without getting into tenuous semantics - i mean the universe will (possibly) reach maximum entropy at some point or other, so, yes, ultimately every injection pump will fail at some point....

Im told that the pre-pd VAG engines have a slightly different combustion chamber, which almost has the benefits of indirect injection - ive never seen one, even though i owned a 1.9. That is, however, aside from the injection pump, isnt it?

julianf said:

I quoted your post, addressed the quote, and then moved on. My error, or possibly yours, was in the lack of distinction between the text addressed at your post, and the general follow on.

You have, however, given it this bit -



I will not pretend to know everything. As you pointed out, at 85c, there are differences in viscosity between svo and dino, in contrast to my suggestion previously. I went on to query if this difference was of a large enough factor.

I would ask you to fortify your claim of "shown yourself not to be knowledgeable enough" and "lack understanding" as, in my mind, it seems like youre saying "talking ****", which i honestly do not believe, so would challenge you to furnish me with detail, without getting into tenuous semantics - i mean the universe will (possibly) reach maximum entropy at some point or other, so, yes, ultimately every injection pump will fail at some point....

Im told that the pre-pd VAG engines have a slightly different combustion chamber, which almost has the benefits of indirect injection - ive never seen one, even though i owned a 1.9. That is, however, aside from the injection pump, isnt it?

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Injection pumps are a pretty broad church in themselves, although I have no idea what a VW one looks like.

For example, the Gardner 4L3 in my old fishing boat had a massive in line set up, basically 4 separate single plunger pumps bolted together.
For worldwide sales in the 1950s, the pump and engine were designed to run on about anything you can imagine, heated coconut fat, or even lard. I imagine the pump would have chewed up veg oil, clean or used, and spat it out into the cylinders, for ever and a day.

At the other end of the scale, the injection pump in my Mondeo is a tricksy little thing, with all kinds of sensors telling it about fuel and intake air quality, and probably not very user serviceable either. I would be reluctant to put in anything but pump diesel, and indeed, on occasion it gets a tank of premium fuel, hoping to extend the life of the DPF, which are also expensive.

I would imagine landrover pumps fall somewhere between the two extremes. You pay your money, and take your choice.

The 1.9 non-pd has a bosch. Its got electrickery on it, but its pretty similar to the 2/300 tdi pump.
I believe that the pd is VAGs precursor to common rail, which is why i used it as an example - because using veg in a common rail is generally considered to be a path to the scrap yard. I was using it as an example of how it could be done on a system that is generally perceived as being more fragile than a lot of LR setups, with some care.

julianf said:

I would ask you to fortify your claim of "shown yourself not to be knowledgeable enough" and "lack understanding" as, in my mind, it seems like you're saying "talking ****", which i honestly do not believe, so would challenge you to furnish me with detail, without getting into tenuous semantics - i mean the universe will (possibly) reach maximum entropy at some point or other, so, yes, ultimately every injection pump will fail at some point....

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None of the facts or figures I have quoted are secret - they are in reference books, science text books, engineering textbooks and all over the internet. Why don't you do us all a favour and go and furnish yourself with the details.

Even better, you come back with facts to prove me wrong - bearing in mind what I have said from my pieces starting on page 13 of this thread.

You have repeatedly misinterpreted my postings - for the avoidance of any doubt I have just read my posts again from post #245. Post #247 really is the one you should be hostile towards as the great SVO advocate - but - the man is right! In post #249 he backs up his comments something I have elaborated on - yet you seem to have an issue with the facts I have presented.

In my post #259 I comment further on the kinematic viscosity issues and mitigation measures - also give a little tribology lesson - more fact that you can read up on. I further comment on pumps that cope better with veg and which won't - I still am not saying not to do it - just some more useful information. I conclude that post with a option to try and get SVO into the realms of a good viscosity - I would say most people would see this as advice on how to achieve something.

In your post #260 you comment that heated SVO would be the same viscosity as DERV - well no it wouldn't and I explain this in post #262 - I also agree with your theory in my reply.

Your post #266 you say - "I don't know if you're right or not. I just know that I, personally, as in, in real actual life, know people who have been doing this stuff for year and years..." so by your own admission you don't actually know enough to know if I am right or not yet now accuse me of talking rubbish?

You also ask for some firm data on viscosity of diesel and Rape Seed Oil (which thanks to @jamesmartin he educated me that it was also called Canola oil). You make some wild guesses that SVO at 84°C will be around the viscosity equivalent to 70second oil.

I reply in post #272 and mention that oil is greater than 250 second oil. I mention that the viscosities are quite high until fairly high temps are reached and or SVO is cut with DERV. I then discuss the impact of very hot oil going into an injection pump - a general question that we could all chew over and consider.

This brings us to your more recent posts, #281 where you now allude to be much more knowledgeable than you did in post #266 when you didn't know if I was right or not. This post, #281 is a direct response to me, you mention a friend with a VW PD engine and how clearly his success is irrefutable proof that SVO is fine - it's a unit injector engine -but you then go on about pre-PD engines so I am not sure what you're talking about now, you're now getting irritated and start to comment your being sucked into "this". I don't know what 'this' is, but it sounds to me like someone who doesn't have all the facts getting annoyed.

julianf said:

I don't know if you're right or not.

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But you will argue with me about the facts anyway!

So, in short, my claim on the viscosity of veg at 84c was incorrect, which you set me straight on with numbers. I followed up in accepting that the number were different, and queried if the magnitude of difference was enough to cause concern.

That's the basis for you claiming my lack of understanding? Was there anything more - i mean not relating to viscosity data tables?

Scrap that - you are correct in every single respect, wholly and without omission - apologies for causing your blood pressure to rise.

julianf said:

So, in short, my claim on the viscosity of veg at 84c was incorrect, which you set me straight on with numbers. I followed up in accepting that the number were different, and queried if the magnitude of difference was enough to cause concern.

That's the basis for you claiming my lack of understanding? Was there anything more - i mean not relating to viscosity data tables?

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You debate everything I have said... I think this could be a great discussion working out how to do it reliably and make it work long term - if you think of the knowledge on this forum it is unbelievable, pretty much anything can be solved if we all think things through together.

I am more than happy to set aside our past disagreement and discuss this but I got a lot of negativity back and I felt that really this wasn't going forward as a constructive thread.

In fact it would probably be quite interesting to hear from your Bio Diesel club who runs what and on what oils and what is their current mileage is, how much are they actually using and have they had any issues - there are lists out there of diesel cars that have done fairly big mileages on SVO / Bio and the pro's and con's.

discomania said:

In fact it would probably be quite interesting to hear from your Bio Diesel club who runs what and on what oils and what is their current mileage is, how much are they actually using and have they had any issues

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Noone bothers with stuff like that. They just show off their contraptions. This (allegedly, etc. etc) from a couple of years back -

julianf said:

Noone bothers with stuff like that. They just show off their contraptions. This (allegedly, etc. etc) from a couple of years back -

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That seemed to be more about how to make a rocket propelled grenade than biofuel!

Turboman said:

That seemed to be more about how to make a rocket propelled grenade than biofuel!

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Someone had a load of airbags from a scrap yard.

In previous years there have been all sorts, from jet engines to meat smokers. Flame throwers are a common theme.