Veg oil users, Cottonseed, Canola or Sunflower?

[brad-chevlux]

i know this isn't realy a bio fuel thread.
but
for the guys making bio deisel, what are you doing with the glycerine thats left at the bottom

[zagan]

apprantly yopu can turn it into a really good soap that'll wash everything.

oil out of rags etc, wash your body with etc.

[macca81]

i just had a thort at work 2day... KFC oil will prob be no good at all, as at room temp it is solid... we used to have to melt down 10kg blocks of the stuff bf topping up the fryers during the evening... dunno what other places are like, but yeah...

[Tim HJ61]

Howdy,

I've been running my 12HT direct injection HJ61 Landcruiser on initially blends of Canola oil and now 100% for a few years. I'm chair of WARFA www.warfa.asn.au a WA user group of straight vege and backyard biodiesel producers.

The best forum is at http://www.biofuelsforum.com as it an Aussie based board.

There has been a lot of misinformation in this post that I can't cover off all of it.

Some of the many lessons I have learnt on the way are:

- Most IP's are okay. Some of the rotary Lucas break shafts if you have cold oil in them. Sometimes they break even with hot oil. There arent many of these around.
- Indirect injection is better. Direct injection is possible - I do it fine. Go visit the board for plenty of info on this topic.
- Starting on cold oil is not the best idea unless you have an indirect injection engine and live in warm climate. Sure some IP's and engines handle it. I wonder what their combustion chamber looks like?
- Vege oil does not soften rubber a great deal - it's biodiesel that does that.
- you only have to carry heaps of spare filters if your home filtering is inadequate.
- Viscosity and flow are your biggest challenges so the stuff will flow through the pump and more importantly spray through the injectors properly.
- Home filtering and care for oil is critical for less troubles on the road. Settling is a very effective filtering mechanism and it is best to filter to 1 micron to avoid fine brown sediments blocking filters from used oil.
- Use filter bags for a more manual setup, tipping oil from the drums through the bags. or build a motor driven hydraulic gear pump that pushes oil through house filters with spun poly filters available on ebay.
- Heat from one or two coolant/fuel heat 30 plate flat plate heat exchangers are very effective to get your oil hot enough to be nice to your engine and your filters. Your onboard filters must see hot oil. Insulate them. Insulate everything. Heat is your friend. Loop your return to keep the heat in the engine bay, not in the tank. Put another FPHE after the filters and very close to the IP for optimal setup.
- Most people use Pollak valves - 6 port electric driven valves - to change between diesel for start up and shut down, and vege. they are rated to 80°C. My system runs at 95°C so I lost faith in the plastic bodied Pollak's and along with a mate have built kick arrrrs 3 way ball valves driven by electric window window winder motors. Beware of fake Pollak valves. See the forum for details on fake valves.
- Do not use plain steel aftermarket tanks common on 4x4's for your onboard vege. It is likely that a reaction will occur where you will develop tomato paste or polymerisation. I've seen a 10 litre bucket filled with the scraping out of one tank!! Plain steel tanks must be coated with POR15 which then stops the steel acting as a catalyst in the reaction. OEM tanks have other coatings that seem to stop this from happening
- Do not allow vege to bleed back into your diesel tank. It can set off algal growths that have previously been kept in control. Suddenly you add a bit of organic matter - vege oil - and the algae goes wild. Diesel CAN go into your vege tank, just not the other way around.
- glycerol is a by product of making biodiesel and is a very effective cleaner. Use it to clean up the mess you make at home on your garage floors when you spill your vege oil. Use it to wash your hands. Just make sure the methanol has evaporated first otherwise you will have serious health consequences such as blindness. Serious.
- Don't filter your used oil when it is hot. You will let solid fats through the filters and in cold weather they will block your pickup in the tank.
- Instal 12mm fuel lines to assist flow. Landcruiser 8mm lines do not work.
- Don't bother trying to find an onboard pump to assist flow to the IP, only the $600 gear pumps work on vege. Increase your fuel line size instead and/or heat your lines to improve viscosity.
- Do not try to use solid fats unless you install tank heaters and heated lines. These are not difficult, but just extra complexity.
- Using exhaust heat is too hard to regulate. Too high and you cook the oil, and your IP. exhaust heat is too variable.
- electric heating doesn't make sense for Aussie situations IMHO unless you're in really cold climates. Might have it's place to assist avoid fat plugging on cold mornings. 30 plate Coolant heat exchangers are the ants pants.
- try blending if you feel like it. I know a guy with an 80 series 1HZ that swears by a 15% ULP to 85% used Vege and not other heating.
- do not add heat to ULP blends - you get real bad preignition.
- others cut vege with kero.
- 20% of canola in diesel is regarded as a safe blend for most diesels and you get to lose the diesel exhaust smell at that rate. Anything more, add heat or better go to a two tank system -start up and shut down on diesel, and turn to canola around 50°C.
- it is against taxation law to blend and excisable fuel and a non excisable fuel. This means you are breaking tax laws if you blend with ULP or diesel.
- it is not against tax laws to use 100% vege oil, or use a two tank system as the fuel is not blended.
- it may bend Council laws to store large quantities of canola in your shed. Be nice to your neighbours so they don't complain.
- if you collect a quantity of used oil, you may be in breach of your state controlled waste laws.
- No one cares much about these laws, but you need to know.


Kids this is a very hands on fueling system. If you do not have the time - about two hours a week once it is all setup - don't bother.
If you do not have the confidence to take a leap of faith into the dark art of using vege oil, nor the competence to problem solve your system when it is late at night, your car is stopped in a dark street, it's raining and the missus is tapping the fingers and rolling her eyes, then don't do it.
If you don't like getting messy, smelling like vege oil, have a nice clean shed that you're really proud of, then don't do it. sometimes high pressure filtering hoses come off and the angry snake sprays vege oil in a neat pattern over the roof of your shed, only to form lovely globules on the ceiling that attracts flies ..... or worse.
Sort out your oil supply FIRST. Try the big chains if you feel inclined. Most likely they will be sorted out with a contract to a collection company. Try little fishies that advertise they use canola or cottonseed. Restaurants often use palm oil. Palm oil has most likely come from cleared rainforests. This is very bad. It also won't work in your car unless you have heated tanks. Stay away from palm oil.

If you want to know more, go spend some time lurking on the
http://www.biofuelsforum.com/svo_users/ board. There is a sticky showing vehicles that have been successfully converted in Australia. There is also a guy in Sydney who will do your conversion for you. Do a search for Fitian. AFAIK, no one else does conversions for other people.

WARFA meets second Sunday each month in Perth. See the website for contact details.

Hope this helps a bit. It should do, it's taken me two years to figure all this stuff out.

Tim