running your car on vegtable oil
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Again, you don't need to be registered as a business. Some of the courier firms will only delivery IBCs to business premises, but that's a transport issue, rather than anything else. If you want to get a pallet of 205s, with 50kg of NaOH strapped to the top of them, they will drop them wherever. And this was the case prior to 2014 also...
There are so many people pretending to know stuff in this area who are just that - pretending. You were speaking with authority and claiming (still claiming) things that are untrue.
Qualifications?
I think I've got a certificate in fire safety somewhere, but im sensible enough to not assume that makes me a fireman...
Dickeylefrog
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Oh you are that type of person!
discomania
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I know its an old post but as I am working on Biofuel research thought it might be useful. First you cant just get old chip oil. Our (UK) government have now made it that you have to have a waste disposal licence to get it legally, and that can be many thousands of quid. Yes you can run a diesel on veg oil, diesels great exhibition engine ran on peanut oil. But if you live in a cold climate it gets thicker and could clog your engine if running just on veg oil problem is it has fatty acids that are more viscous than Diesel or biodiesel. The reason for pre heating tanks is to bring the ingnition point down, hot oil ignites better than cold oil and to thin it down to reduce the chance of clogging. Its really quite simple to make biodiesel it just involves some basic chemistry to crack the esters but private individuals may find it difficult to buy in bulk eg the caustic soda and ethanol required as part of the process. The set up costs are not cheap if you want to make in bulk as you need a large conical stainless steel tank with heat and stiring as well as some lab measuring stuff.
Now the engine bit. I am fairly happy that the basic 2.25 and 2.5 na engines will work on pure veg oil but wouldnt recommend it as the engineers have made changes since Rudolph invented it. If using unprocessed oil I would think a mix would be better. If you make or buy biodiesel I cant see a problem with running an older engine without all of the tech on it I ran my 2.25D series on biodiesel I made and when I get the chance will do so with my 2.5na 90. As for the TD5 or TDI engines, I cant get any concensus from any forums if long term use is going to damage the engine so as a scientist the default position is do no harm so Im not going to try it until there is more evidence its ok.
Final disclaimer, im a biologist not an engineer (other than the enforced engineering involved with owning Landrovers) so if YOU choose to use veg oil or biodiesel to run in your vehicle I am not responsible if things go pear shaped. This post is just for information and I hold no responsibility for your actions.
In all honesty the bio diesel thing has been done to death - around 2004 I and other Bio Diesel fans were posting heaps about bio on this forum and I was making 1000's of litres of the stuff - all the old stories and facts are on this forum to be read but it's just doing the usual cyclic process where something dies down and then we all forget about it then it all comes back again 10 years later. Some of what you say is correct but there are some things you need to be careful of.
On getting the oil - you can still get it - removing it as a service for money etc. your going to need waste transfer paperwork but if you have a contact that gives you the stuff then you are only taking something away from someone - is it waste? Partially used cooking oil is still usable cooking oil - maybe you are going to cook in it... There is nothing illegal about getting oil - if you start to do it on an industrial scale you may be into some bother, but who is actually going to give you any grief? The police are not looking for WVO smugglers and don't care. Of course if you take money for something, it all changes - like felling tree's! Also - there is some dubiety over what is 'waste' and what is not.
The set up costs do not need to be expensive at all, although I know "proper" plants can be £5000, at the peak I was processing 1000's of litres of stuff using nothing but gathered plumbing bits, pumps and tanks - I was also making it to a fully regulated spec, a properly titrated product with measured levels of methanol in the end product.
As you commented some engines are not fit for this stuff, I agree. It's the pumps not the engine though, they will all run on SVO/WVO and bio diesel but can the pumps deliver it? I would not run any of the Lucas CAV pumps (2.25-2.5) on veg oil - they don't last - I experimented with engines and pumps for years and the Lucas pumps are not robust enough and the oil is too heavy to set up the fine film of oil needed to lubricate these pumps. Bosch pumps on the 200/300tdi's do better but I would still not like to stick raw veg into the tank without some sort of other oils/fuel etc. to sort out the poor lubricity issue, preheating it would work too but it's a pain and people just want a fuel they can chuck in. It's not that engineers made changes to the engines, it's just the pumps are different, high speed rotatory injection pumps need good lube, have you ever had one apart? A dry plunger or transfer pump shaft for example will not go into the cylinder, wet it up with a tiny amount of diesel and it all slides in like a glove - that is the sort of tolerances we are talking here - these parts only survive because of the film of lubrication oil - i.e. diesel - extra sulphur is best!
I ran my 300tdi on the stuff and made some adjustments to the final fuel going into the tank to ensure good lubrication of the pump - I also measured the viscosity and batched it outside the vehicle so I knew what was going in was consistent - not stick 2 gallons of bio in and top it up with a gallon of diesel and try and keep a tally of what is in the tank!
I reckon the best engine for bio is actually the TD5 if the fuel is made to exacting specifications - which is the issue with most bio diesel! The TD5 has, like an injection pumped engine, some critical parts that need to be well lubricated - the injectors obviously are the most expensive moving part that needs lube in these engines - keep them happy and you are onto a winner - the tank pump should be fine, again if the bio is made well.
I stopped making it years ago - I think I have 20litres left over that I have held onto - my mileage didn't warrant the messing about anymore and my time became more important to me.
My advice would be for you to do a fair bit more research into the workings of the fuel delivery and injection systems - you will also need to look into the process of making bio to better understand it - to put what I have learned here in 14 years of bio making would take me days to type up - better is a discussion to talk through it all (welcome to talk on the phone if that helps) so if you have a keen interest and want to make this stuff I am happy to help you.
I think it is safe to say that those who are involved in bio diesel know how to go about it and what they are doing - it looks like you want to get into it, so if it was me, starting fresh, I would probably ask the question then sit back and wait to be told what you need to know.
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I came across this thread whilst looking for something else, but....
I experimented with biodiesel a while ago, not with a Land Rover but with a Mercedes E300 Diesel. Making the biodiesel is messy and smelly and in the end I decided that I couldn't be bothered and ran on straight veg oil (SVO) instead. The main issue with this is the much higher viscosity of SVO .... when it's cold. BUT when you heat it to about 80deg it's got a similar viscosity to mineral diesel. Put canola oil in a frying pan and see what I mean. So what I did was install a small heat exchanger and heated the veg oil with engine coolant, at the same time putting a hotter thermostat in the car. This almost did the job so I machined a small aluminium block and used two old Bosch heater plugs so that the oil flowed over the tips of the plugs, wired them up to engine "hot" and that got the oil to the right temperature.
The car didn't like to start on cold winter mornings (who does?) so I installed a separate small tank to start on diesel. The veg oil washed all the crud out of the fuel system (the car was an ex-taxi with half a million on the clock) so I had to replace the fuel filter weekly at first. Also it ate all the old rubber o-rings and seals causing no end of leaks. My local Mercedes garage supplied me with biodiesel-friendly replacements. The car ran perfectly, albeit with slightly reduced performance - but with a 3 litre diesel who cares? It did smell of pub chips, though.
At the time I did think of trying this with my Series 2 which had a Perkins diesel in it at the time, but the Lucas CAV rotary fuel injector pumps are much more prone to failure with viscous fuel then the Bosch inline cam-driven pumps in the Merc engines. I've never messed about with LR TDIs (I prefer big V8s) so don't know what they use.
I have no idea if this is useful, but thought I'd share it just to show that there's an alternative to chemistry (and this is coming from a chemistry graduate!) - just heat the stuff up.
cheers
Oily.
I experimented with biodiesel a while ago, not with a Land Rover but with a Mercedes E300 Diesel. Making the biodiesel is messy and smelly and in the end I decided that I couldn't be bothered and ran on straight veg oil (SVO) instead. The main issue with this is the much higher viscosity of SVO .... when it's cold. BUT when you heat it to about 80deg it's got a similar viscosity to mineral diesel. Put canola oil in a frying pan and see what I mean. So what I did was install a small heat exchanger and heated the veg oil with engine coolant, at the same time putting a hotter thermostat in the car. This almost did the job so I machined a small aluminium block and used two old Bosch heater plugs so that the oil flowed over the tips of the plugs, wired them up to engine "hot" and that got the oil to the right temperature.
The car didn't like to start on cold winter mornings (who does?) so I installed a separate small tank to start on diesel. The veg oil washed all the crud out of the fuel system (the car was an ex-taxi with half a million on the clock) so I had to replace the fuel filter weekly at first. Also it ate all the old rubber o-rings and seals causing no end of leaks. My local Mercedes garage supplied me with biodiesel-friendly replacements. The car ran perfectly, albeit with slightly reduced performance - but with a 3 litre diesel who cares? It did smell of pub chips, though.
At the time I did think of trying this with my Series 2 which had a Perkins diesel in it at the time, but the Lucas CAV rotary fuel injector pumps are much more prone to failure with viscous fuel then the Bosch inline cam-driven pumps in the Merc engines. I've never messed about with LR TDIs (I prefer big V8s) so don't know what they use.
I have no idea if this is useful, but thought I'd share it just to show that there's an alternative to chemistry (and this is coming from a chemistry graduate!) - just heat the stuff up.
cheers
Oily.
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Using straight SVO will over time knacker your injection pump.
I commuted 800+ miles a week for several years on SVO. Like I said above, the Bosch inline pumps seem to cope with it, rotary pumps like the Lucas CAV will have problems and suffer broken shafts due to the increased torque of turning them on COLD veg oil. The trick is to heat it to about 100deg BEFORE it does through the pump. As I also said, I have no experience of LR TDI engines so bow to your experience on that one.
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Any rotary pump will eventually fail using it. However a mix of 50/50 derv and SVO in summer and 60 derv and 40 SVO in winter should be fine.
Only if you're a mug about it.
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And that means exactly what?
Your post was stuck between two others, both of which advised preheating.
It's not as simple as just saying "over time will knacker your injection pump"
It will, if you're mug about it, but not if you have some sense about you.
In fairness, I don't know anyone who is doing a common rail on veg, but I have a real life friend who has run a VAG PD engine for, I think, about 8 years on just wvo (he uses Dino for the warm up and purge). He is methodical to the extent I offered him some bio when he was low once and he was too cautious to even use that!
If you reckon that you can just stop by Tesco and pour svo into your 300tdi tank, then, sure, somthing is going to fail (I suspect not the IP though) but you were condemning all use of veg as somthing that would break the IP over time, which isn't really correct.
It's not as simple as just saying "over time will knacker your injection pump"
It will, if you're mug about it, but not if you have some sense about you.
In fairness, I don't know anyone who is doing a common rail on veg, but I have a real life friend who has run a VAG PD engine for, I think, about 8 years on just wvo (he uses Dino for the warm up and purge). He is methodical to the extent I offered him some bio when he was low once and he was too cautious to even use that!
If you reckon that you can just stop by Tesco and pour svo into your 300tdi tank, then, sure, somthing is going to fail (I suspect not the IP though) but you were condemning all use of veg as somthing that would break the IP over time, which isn't really correct.
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I did not condemn use of SVO if used as a mix with derv. Using pure SVO WILL knacker your rotary pump. That is a certainty.
I'll ask my favourite question:
"Why?"
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I will give you the definitive answer, contamination and lubrication.
OK. So to take each point in turn:
(1) Contamination. Fair point, if you put dirty crud through there - but if it's clean and dry (difficult with waste oil, but easy with clean canola oil) then I see no problem
(2) Lubrication. Veg oil has the lubricating properties of DERV. Back in the days when there was no yellow dye in central heating oil, I knew LOTS of people who mixed kerosene 20:1 with mineral engine oil and did many miles in white vans etc. The oil is there as you say to provide lubrication which is not provided by kerosene, the main combustible constituent of DERV. Veg oils like Canola oil have these lubricating properties already.
I guess to an extent it depends on the type of seals used inside the pump. In my Merc I needed to replace just about every piece of rubber in the entire system - including O rings at all six high pressure outputs on the Bosch inline pump. It seems that the veg oil attacked these old rubber O rings and I ended up fitting modern nitrile type ones, which cured the problem. I ended up with all sorts of annoying air locks and leaks till I found every bit of rubber and replaced it. However this was not due to lack of lubrication, it was due to the chemical incompatibility of the veg oil with the rubber material. I can't see how mixing DERV in there would stop this from happening. It might slow it down.
This book has a lot of good detail in it Amazon product
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But have a look inside your chip pan, mixing with derv helps but neat SVO kills rotary pumps. But carry on you obviously know best.
(a) I don't have a chip pan and (b) I don't have a diesel car any more so don't run veg oil and haven't for years. I'm just interested to get to the bottom of the theory behind your assertion firstly that veg oil kills injection pumps and then that it only kills rotary pumps. I can see the point about contamination if you just pour dirty, unfiltered and undried second hand veg oil into the tank, but I'm not convinced on the lubrication issue UNLESS you know of something specific to rotary pumps that I don't. My understanding of why SVO kills rotary pumps is from investigating the topic some time ago - and that problem is the extra stress that the torque of pumping a much more viscous fuel places on the shaft. That was deemed a problem specific to rotary pumps and less so in cam-driven inline pumps. As I stated first of all, my only experience was driving many, many miles with SVO using a pre-heater and an inline pump. Old school Mercedes-Benz diesels are in any case pretty indestructible.
discomania
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Point 1. - quite right, properly treated oil would be fine too - it just needs run through a polishing plant - but not many will have access to one or the time and inclination to make one - used water contaminated veg oil is best treated and made into bio as the last process of bio is to wash it with water and then remove it all, so at this stage you can remove all the water anyway!
Point 2. - Your right and wrong - the second part of your reasonable answer sort of contradicts the first part or your answer. Vegetable based oil does not lubricate as well as DERV - veg oils need to be manipulated to offer anything like the same lubricity factor as BS EN 590:2013 diesel. Mostly it is due to its kinematic viscosity, which, the Kero altered. It is like gearbox oil, they all lubricate and they all reduce friction, but some reduce friction too much and some not enough some cling well some fling off at the slightest motion and don't offer good upper end lubrication in a splash system - tribology is a massive subject and very complicated.
Regarding the lubrication properties of veg oil - consider this - have you ever coated a part in grease then struggled to fit it because of the drag the grease creates? However, had you used some light oil the part would have slid on a treat, but had you used no oil the part would have never gone on at all? Well think of this when your injection pump is running with veg oil flooded round it's every moving part. Veg oil will also leave solid deposits over time and can gunge up governors.
Inline pumps do cope much better with veg oil. A Lucas CAV rotary pump such as on the 2.25-2.5 would just plain fail in quick time - these were weak pumps at the best of time.
In short - vegetable oil will not lubricate anything like that of DERV. If you wanted to get your veg oil to lube well I would batch mix it with derv and at an ambient temperature (but which one?You would need a summer and winter mix) your likely to get during the use period of that fuel. Using a graduated cylinder and a sphere I would calculate the kinematic viscosity and try and match your fuel to that of DERV which, off the top of my head is between about 2-4 mm2/s (cSt) - a typical veg oil is about 43 mm2/s (cSt).
Also, nitrile seals are not great with biodiesel but OK with veg oil - Viton would have been better as that would have let you use bio too.
Hypothetically, if I had an electric engine pre heater, and used it every time the car was started from cold, you are saying that I would still break my non common rail diesel injection pump by running on svo?
Ie no diesel involved, but the svo would be heated, so the same viscosity as diesel.
Would this somehow break the pump due to contamination (???) and lack of lubrication?
Basically IPS get broken due to the fuel being more viscous, or people feeding them water and grime. Heated svo will not have water and grime, and will not have the viscosity issue.
Ring gumming (which hasn't been mentioned) is thought to occur due to poor spray pattern, and incomplete combustion. Again, heating to the same viscosity as mineral diesel is shown to resolve this.
There's not going to be contamination in svo.
It's fine if you don't want to do it, but when you start saying that a car won't run on svo due to contamination, it all starts to get a bit far fetched.
Ie no diesel involved, but the svo would be heated, so the same viscosity as diesel.
Would this somehow break the pump due to contamination (???) and lack of lubrication?
Basically IPS get broken due to the fuel being more viscous, or people feeding them water and grime. Heated svo will not have water and grime, and will not have the viscosity issue.
Ring gumming (which hasn't been mentioned) is thought to occur due to poor spray pattern, and incomplete combustion. Again, heating to the same viscosity as mineral diesel is shown to resolve this.
There's not going to be contamination in svo.
It's fine if you don't want to do it, but when you start saying that a car won't run on svo due to contamination, it all starts to get a bit far fetched.
