BioDiesel

[Brucec]

Just saw on the news about Biodiesel?? Artificial diesel fuel that is to be better than petroleum diesel. Lot's of information on the net about this does anyone know if it will be cheeper than petroleum diesel??

[TDIwyse]

Don't know if I'ld call it "better" the dino diesel. There are aspects of both that are "better" than the other. As far as cost goes, it's currently more expensive here in the states. In Europe I believe it's cheaper than dino diesel. If you consider the hidden cost of our fuel (things like national defense spending to secure access to oil reserves in the middle east) I'm not so certain it's actually more expensive.

I've been using soy diesel in my VW for about a year, usually in the 40-50% range (on a side note, VW America says not to use biodiesel, but VW Germany encourages use of biodiesel). I'm running a 10-20% blend in the Dmax. It's interesting to note that the diesel engine, when invented by the German Rudolph Diesel, was origininally created to run on vegetable oil. Kinda neat.

There's a lot of good info at www.biodiesel.org. You can search their archives for studies done comparing different aspects of biodiesel and biodiesel blended fuels.

[charliepeterson]

I work at one of Boston's Transit bus garages and we tried this "Bio-Diesel" on twenty buses for a time study and this stuff s**s! The fuel burned holes in the pistons and valves. In the winter it plugged up the filters when it got real cold. We canceled the contract.Now we run strictly ultra low sulfer fuel. It lost its "kick" for performance but we are looking for emission results. I've heard the country will be running this new fuel by 2004. If you don't use fuel conditioners it will burn out the injector pump like it did on my truck after only 10,000 miles.


Charlie P. #3107
95 Tahoe 6.5 TD

[TDIwyse]

charliepeterson

That's interesting. The buses here in Cedar Rapids have been running B20 for over a year and they're very happy. Less problems with the B20 buses, especially with injectors and pumps. Last week I was reading a study done on Minnesota road maintenance trucks that ran B20 during the winter. Again, no problems with those trucks. They did treat the blended fuel with an additive to lower the cold filter plug point. They didn't notice any reduction in mpg, and no fuel dilution or excesses engine wear. That study is located at:
http://www.mda.state.mn.us/ams/biodieselfinal.pdf

Do you have a contact person I could call regarding the problems you experienced with the biodiesel? I'ld like to find out some of the details about this.

[KenZ]

TDIwyse,

I think the original diesel was designed to run on coal dust.

Ken

[TDIwyse]

I just re-checked my references and I was incorrect. It was peanut oil he first used. Not quite a vegetable oil smile.gif

[charliepeterson]

TDIwyse:

The coaches we ran this stuff in were powered with the Detroit Diesel 50 series inline four banger. Now we are going over to CNG. The order is supposed to be four hundred buses. This stuff causes cancer when it reacts with heat comming out of the tail pipe. It's real nasty!
I don't think anyone of official management is going to comment on the Bio stuff. We took a bath on the contract and kept it out of the media for the most part.


Charlie P. #3107
95 Tahoe 6.5 TD

[KenZ]

TDIwyse

Look at http://www.freeautoadvice.com/diesel/hist.html

I have found other references to this in the past. What is the "original" or "first" diesel engine? I guess it depends on if you mean working or not. His first one blew up, so in a since it did work and didn't work.

Anyway not trying to cause a debate. There is so much information out there, I guess you could prove anything you wanted. A French encyclopedia was trying to rewrite history and say the Holacaust only killed 150,000 and only 100,000 of those Jews. They got caught and fined, but the books werent recalled, so its still in print for future people to reference.

I couldn't find any references to peanut oil. Maybe that was the first Bio diesel.


Ken

[TDIwyse]

KenZ

Thanks for the link. It is interesting how history can be described differently by different people. After more research I have to agree with you that Rudolf first tried coal dust. The peanut oil reference can be found here:
http://www.greasecar.com/pages.cfm?ID=2

But it does say he tried coal dust first, but was unsuccessful.

Part of my interest in diesel engines is the ability to use a renewable energy source, such as soy diesel. The growth of biodiesel use in Europe (they use primarily rape seed) is very encouraging to me. I can not wait 'til we get ULSD here in the states and BMW, Mercedez, Audi, VW, etc. start bring over their diesels . . .