BioDiesel

I have never used it, nor have I seen it for sale on the water. However, I have heard from several mechanics to never use it as it does a number on your fuel injectors and injector pump.

it is for sale at ventura harbor in ca , we tried some in some off road equipment tier 3 and it was a dissaster for us that was last year , not going to try it again in the near future

travler

What happened and why was it a disaster?

French-Fries clogging fuel injectors

I have heard of lots of problems with biodiesel made from recycled cooking oil but I havent yet heard of problems from engineered biodiesel like the stuff made from algea. Which, not to get off topic, is something that can be made onboard a yacht rather easily...

Dan

I've had an e-mail from Volvo-Penta giving specs of which engines of the range will accept Bio and at which ratio they will run correctly. It's very 'techie'.

France has made it law that 5% of all automotive diesel must be Bio. Some of the older engines will not like it. The seals in the injector pump may not accept a certain amount of the ethers in Bio fuels.

If you are thinking of changeing to Bio, do some very good research first.

Check out the VW and Volvo websites. Very interesting when you get passed the PR rubbish.

Hi,

There is a tremendous amount of effort put into Bio Diesel over in Europe.

A few years ago I was looking into running a new project on Bio Diesel, I was able to secure an offer from a company in Holland to truck the fuel down to the Med Coast for no more than the cost of Normal Diesel for orders of 150,000 Lt and above.

In the meantime I would say in truth that the overall attitude to it has not gone anywhere useful, evidence of this is attached.

FISH- What did you find on the VW Website?

The photo is of the Fuel Flap on a 2008 Hi Spec VW Passat. The current VW position on the use of Bio Diesel is easy to see.

My previous 2004 Model was able to run Bio Diesel

Hi,

And this one shows a denied warranty claim from running Bio Diesel.....

Hi,

Could you please share with us what exactly went wrong- I am happy to give you my e mail addy if you don't want to post it online.

For those who are interested here is a good explanation of what the various Engine Tiers actually are.

http://www.dieselnet.com/standards/us/nonroad.php

Honestly, I think our efforts to reduce oil usage would best be focused on non consumer products with biodiesel and ethanol. I think with consumer products due to logistics and such, it's best to focus on increasing fuel economy with what we have. Look at the VW diesel passanger cars, they are getting almost 55 mpg on the highway. That's pretty darn good and almost 50% more then their gasoline counterpart.

Basically develop offroad engines such as farm equipment, generators and such that are designed from the manufacturer to run on 100% biodiesel or ethanol. I know a guy down in Miami that is working on making conversion kits for generators and such so that they run on vegetable oil. Supposedly they still need to be started and warmed up on diesel fuel for 5-10 minutes and then they switch to 100% vegetable oil. Supposedly if ordered in large quantities he could get the vegetable oil for much less then $1 US a gallon.

Also society is pretty wasteful. For a family for example, why not have one car for taking road trips and such. And something extremely economical like a Smart Car for your daily driving around town. Yet, most people want to be seen in their BMW commuting to and from work to make themselves feel important.

Hi,

Does this look like what your Miami guy is working on?

http://www.vegetableoildiesel.co.uk/conversionkits.html

one issue is that a lot of the "things i heard" are not realiable and anecdotal. For every person who sayd, bioD is bad, you hear one who says he's been running it for years without issue. Same with running diesel on Vegie oil, many older and newer diesels run just fine. hard to make a decision on a very small statistical sampling.

and dont' forget that manufacturers will fall back on CYA when in doubt.

i'd be tempted to use it... The only established fact is that bioD will clean your tank and fuel lines resulting in frequent filter changes initially

One of my favotite snacks, prezel rods.

There was an article or two in Dockwalk or the Triton a while back about a yacht using bio-diesel. They seemed happy with it at the time. I want to say they were running 100% bio. But I could be wrong.

I have no idea what he is working on looks like. I've just heard about it from a friend of his. He has a yacht that he runs it on, and some generators......I have heard that he hasn't had any issues with it. However, I don't know anything further.

http://bulkoil.com/

In the Navy-

'Beginning June 1, 2005 all U.S. Navy and Marine non-tactical diesel vehicles will be required to operate on a B20 (20 percent) biodiesel blend as part of the military's efforts to increase their use of domestic and clean fuels. "We commend the Navy for its leadership role in advancing the use of biodiesel and other alternative fuels," said Joe Jobe, National Biodiesel Board (NBB) executive director. "With the U.S. importing more than half of all oil consumed, turning to domestic energy sources like biodiesel is critical. The Navy is setting a positive example for the rest of the nation with this new policy." Jobe added that the Navy is the largest user of diesel fuel in the world, and is charged with protecting shipping routes to import petroleum to the United States. "Naval leaders clearly recognize the responsibility the Navy has to reduce its own use of petroleum, and we commend them for that," Jobe said.

Hi,

Going by the wording of that it looks like it was written before the date that this was to be implemented.

Does anyone actually know if this change to B20 took place or not?

Hi,

So you post in No 9 that you know a guy in Miami who is working on conversion kits than you post again in No 14 the text above.

It would therefore be fair to say that anything you post about his conversion kits is purely hearsay wouldn't you say?

The diesel engine was invented to run on peanut oil, its not a far stretch of the imagination to conceive of it running on biodiesel just fine. sure there are some components in some engines that are fine tuned to use diesel oil, an expensive conversion kit is not needed, only a few parts here and there, and probably more clogging of fuel injectors and fuel filters depending on the quality.

As for making biodiesel your self out of algae on a yacht I think you underestimate the equipment needed. Even at 20% efficiency a solar power system will capture much more energy with less space and less weight. With algae you need the water tanks in the sun, and to inject CO2 into them, and you need filters to catch them out every night, and heavy hydraulic presses to compress them, and bacterial farms to produce the enzymes you need to break down the chips left over into sugars, and fermenting tanks and large water tanks or water makers and yeast to turn that sugar into ethanol, and a still to refine the ethanol, and a few bags of lye, and a large tank to process the oil you pressed and the ethanol you made into biodiesel. it you had a large barge you could potentially make enough to keep you puttering along at trawling speeds, it would be an interesting life though.