All about biodiesel

Cartoon by Nicholson www.nicholsoncartoons.com.au

Once upon a time in the long long ago a bloke named Rudolph Diesel thought he could change the world with a revolutionary engine that ran on peanut oil. Pity he tried to sell it to both the French and English naval fleets for their submarines, got mixed up in political intrigue and was next seen face down in the English Channel.

Still, despite all this his name is carried on with the diesel engine. The only difference is that the fuel companies capitalized on his name, engine and a byproduct of the newly founded oil industry. The inevitable result was a fuel called "diesel" and an engine modified to run on the new, less viscous stuff "they" decided "you" should use. Good-bye peanut, hello money!

All this is very jolly and all, but you should know that it is still possible to run your modern computer controlled direct injected turbo super charged intercooled piece of wizbangery on veggie oil, or at least on biodiesel made from veggie oil. Any old diesel in fact will do, from today's hi-tech piece of trickery to yesteryears rattler. They will all run on biodiesel!

You could spend a heap, start and stop you vehicle on diesel and run it on preheated straight veggie oil if you were really keen. It is however a very easy process to convert veggie oil, in fact even used veggie oil into good diesel fuel the trade has named "biodiesel" or "bio-diesel". This stuff is commercially available in Europe, America and to a limited amount in Australia.

Here in Australia it was considered commercially viable to make and sell biodiesel when diesel fuel reached the $1.00 per litre mark, but only if the government declared biodiesel excise free. In fact they did declare it excise free until a short while ago, then some bean counter with his pay cheque subsidized by a multinational fuel companies political donation decided that biodiesel should have the same excise applied to it as conventional diesel fuel. Diesel fuel in my area at least is now over $1.30 per litre and the oil wars seen to be underway. At least now it is possible to make commercial biodiesel and in fact this is happening right here in Australia as well as worldwide.

So where does this leave us? Before you get bored with the whole thing and press the "surf" button on your explorer browser consider this; in Australia waste cooking oil from the restaurant/fast food/cooking industries is so prevalent it causes disposal problems at landfill sites. I have known about this for years. In fact I have just completed 200,000 kilometers over five years driving on home made biodiesel fuel concocted from used cooking oil and made at home at cost of around 20 cents per liter.

When I first heard about biodiesel I owned a petrol car. I think I kept it about another week before I found a diesel van in good condition. The life of this car on the next page "biodiesel vehicle report". This van was much loved and is now owned by friends who still fill its takks with biodiesel and I am now the proud owner of a Volkswagon Caddy Van. This is a rather stunning vehicle performance wise and has a pretty neat little turbocharged direct injected high tech engine that for minimal capacity and miserly fuel use can propel vehicle and owner down the highway at highly illegal speeds. See: "biodiesel vehicle reports".

So how do you do this magic?

Picture an oil molecule? Now that's probably a bit hard, without a microscope you can't actually see one. Instead lets look at a ping pong ball with three tennis balls stuck to the side. The three tennis balls are what we are interested in, the ping pong ball is glycerin

A simple chemical reaction with a big name will separate these tennis balls from the ping pong ball. In fact this chemical reaction will do a lot more. You will note when you get used veggie oil from the local fast food store that it looks a bit yuk. Apart from the veggie oil you will have bits of cooking detritus like chip bits, crumbs, bits of burnt stuff and other gunk that make the oil unsuited to healthy cooking. Performing this chemical reaction will separate this stuff as well as the glycerin. What you will get is clean biodiesel separated from and lighter than the glycerin and gunky stuff that once made up your used veggie oil.

This simple process with a big name is called transesterification! At right is a sample of transesterised veggie oil or biodiesel, (keep reading for a recipe)! In this sample you can clearly see the clean biodiesel fuel above and distinctly separated from the glycerin and cooking contaminants.

OK how do I perform this unpronounceable task?

Transesterification of veggie oil (making biodiesel) can be performed at home using a home made mixing tank and two readily available ingredients. The mixing tank(s) I use are pictured below, the simple ingredients are methanol and caustic soda. Methanol is a racing fuel available from fuel agents and specialized fuel providers, caustic soda or lye is available from the cleaning goods section of your local supermarket.

Basically what you do is mix the caustic soda with the methanol and then mix the resultant brew into the veggie oil then settle the resultant mix in a tapered bottom mixing tank. The biodiesel, which is lighter than the glycerin and detritus will sit on top of a totally separate layer of glycerin and contaminants.

Try at home now!

Here is a quick recipe to see if making bioidesel is for you. You will need:

• Some vegetable oil, new or used, suggest cheapest new stuff you can buy.

• Some caustic soda, by a 500 gram container from your supermarket for about three bucks.

• Some methanol. Try the local petrol head car racing type or ask at you local service station. This will be your hardest find. Methanol is easy to get if you want 20 or 200 litres, small quantities are harder to find. For this experiment you need 200 ml. A model shop may also be able to help. Methanol is also used in model engines. It must be pure however. (No additives)

• A glass jar with a screw top lid that will hold around 750 ml.

• A smaller glass jar and wooden stirring dowel.

• Accurate scales to measure in half gram increments.

• An accurate measure that will measure in ml.

Put 500 ml of veggie oil in your big jar. In your small jar put 100 ml of methanol. Into this mix in 2 grams of caustic soda. Use the wooden dowel to alternately crush caustic against the jar bottom and stir into methanol. This will take around 3 - 5 minutes.

Caution: Caustic and methanol mixed together is poisonous and a skin irritant, use gloves and eye protection. Perform this task near a water supply and immediately flush any skin contact with water.

Add your methanol/caustic mix to your veggie oil, screw on cap and shake for 3 - 5 minutes.

Bingo! You have just made some biodiesel. Put your jar aside to settle and look at the separation! New oil will result in clearish glycerin, used cooking oil will separate black glycerin. Check my picky. This sample was made from used cooking oil and has actually been settling for 24 hours, however, the glycerin should become apparent after around 20 minutes.

Large scale home production:

I like to keep things low cost. My biodiesel mixing tank is made from an old 200 litre drum. The local engineers made me a tapered cone to suit. I hacked out the bottom and top of the drum and welded on the cone and some legs. I stir it with a electric drill turning a home made paddle. The glycerin comes out the bottom, biodiesel is pumped into my car via a drum pump and oil filter. I saved the cost of manufacture with two mixes. In fact pictured here is my entire biodiesel production plant. I have two tanks, one settles while I use the other, the gas ring applies a little heat for thick or cold oil, the scales are a gram accurate digital model and there is a fire extinguisher if things get out of hand! Methanol is very flammable! A few buckets, some flyscreen, a cardboard cover and some assorted bits of timber complete the kit!

Comprehensive instructions in a value book...

I could go on here for pages and pages. Suffice to say that making biodiesel is actually pretty simple and well within the reach of the average householder. Others will try to tell you differently I am sure. Some folk just like to make complex operations out of simplicity. Me? I was loosing my voice and wasting hours of time explaining biodiesel to everyone, not to mention feeling a bit like a parrot. My solution was to write a book in plain simple English giving you step by step instructions on the whole biodiesel manufacturing process from start to finish. This book has proven very popular, is easy reading and even if you don't go on to make your own fuel you will at least benefit from the knowledge that you can do if you want!

You could also show it to you local politician, tell him the government sucks with its oil company dominated policies and ask him why it is that over 120 years since Rudolph was a boy politicians are peanuts but peanut oil is not fuel.

Simple Biodiesel, a complete "How To" guide to making biodiesel fuel at home: ISBN 0-958100-0-X $25.00 + $3.00 post

Click here to buy the book online

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