Dear twelfty,
As you could find out from this forum, I have been making BioDiesel here in fair quantities for about six years.
I use the methanol and sodium hydroxide process (CH3OH and NaOH) to cause transesterification of the vegetable oils, with which process doubtless you will be intimately familiar, you being so expert in these matters. I usually buy 200 litres of methanol at a time. That is enough for about 1,500 litres of BioDiesel.

There are many people on this forum who have learned to value my advice which is, I hasten to say, based less on cleverness and more on experience. I feel comfortable with the members of the LandyZone community making up their own minds whether to take my advice, or yours.

my point exactly... your experience is with home made bio diesel which is great, and i am familiar with the process, i've done some small batches of it to understand it, but found it to be too time consuming for me as i don't have a garage or workshop to do this in, however i have had alot of experience with petrol and svo mixes and 70 degrees centigrade isn't hot enough to vaporise petrol AND SVO 70 degrees is hot enough to vaporise petrol on it's own, mixing it with svo thickens up the petrol making the vaporisation point alot higher

i'm sure your experience in bio diesel far exceeds mine and have no qualms about it, i'm not really fussed what peoples opinion of you on this forum is but your knowledge to me sounds dated and alot of research and time has gone into this method and isn't as dangerous as you make it out to be.
 
I know who's advice il shall be taking. I would love a quick and easy solution to not keep paying 80% tax on fuel I have bought bulk new veg oil when it was 50p but now its ran out & it's nearly equal diesel :-( iv been round my local chippy & someone else is already getting there oil! I said well I dont mind paying a little for it they said he is :-/ WASTE OIL!!! WTF so setting up a small bio making drum wouldnt pay off! anywho the one thing I do have is an abundance of is waste engine oil but I am worried about ruining my injectors I have filtered some through 25, 10 & 1 micron bags is that enough? It's still black which means there's still fine particles in there! hmmmmm
 
I know who's advice il shall be taking. I would love a quick and easy solution to not keep paying 80% tax on fuel I have bought bulk new veg oil when it was 50p but now its ran out & it's nearly equal diesel :-( iv been round my local chippy & someone else is already getting there oil! I said well I dont mind paying a little for it they said he is :-/ WASTE OIL!!! WTF so setting up a small bio making drum wouldnt pay off! anywho the one thing I do have is an abundance of is waste engine oil but I am worried about ruining my injectors I have filtered some through 25, 10 & 1 micron bags is that enough? It's still black which means there's still fine particles in there! hmmmmm

That level of filtration is more than enough.
The blackness in used engine oil is soft carbon-black, in particle sizes so small it is more or less impossible to filter them out.

Run your tank down to about a quarter, say there's about 20 litres left in there at £1.30 a litre - £26.00 the lot.

Now toss in 10 litres of free used engine oil.

You now have 30+ litres for £26.00, about 85 - 90 p a litre.

Take the car for a short twisty drive after filling to slosh the fuel and give it a good mix. I fill mine with the engine running and after a run if I can so the fuel in the tank is warm and circulating.

You will soon discover what mix the car is happy with, but I suggest you stay under the 50-50 mark, use a bit less used than pump in a TD5.

In a 200 tdi, got for gold!
 
Lurvy Gubly i shall now go and put on my crazy professors white coat whilst laughing in a scary way.

Cheers again monsieur CharlesY
 
quote from twelfty
.........however i have had alot of experience with petrol and svo mixes and 70 degrees centigrade isn't hot enough to vaporise petrol .............
unquote

take care twelfty. Oh yes it is.

some of the components of gasoline / petrol will start to boil off at a hundred degrees ... FAHRENHEIT, which is barely (not even) FORTY degrees Celsius.

Petrol is an unholy mixture of all sorts of stuff blended on the day to achieve the desired properties. Some of the ingredients would "boil off" at body temperature, others might stay liquid to as hot as 200°C.

Kerosene (paraffin to us) is usually stated as having a boiling point just under 150°C, though kero varies a lot, just as does gasoline / petrol


The problem we face is when ANY part of the added petrol boils (thus turns to gas/vapour) in our fuel systems. In a TD5, one wee bubble of vapour can bring down the whole system.

Be sure of this - ALL petrols / gasolines contain a large proportion of liquids with boiling points of 70°C or under.

Twelfty, in a warmed-up TD5, the NORMAL routine return fuel temperature AFTER the return fuel has passed through the fuel cooler is SEVENTY DEGREES CELSIUS. Heaven knows what temperature it is in the injectors and fuel gallery before it reaches the cooler.

Take care. Take advice.
 
quote from twelfty
.........however i have had alot of experience with petrol and svo mixes and 70 degrees centigrade isn't hot enough to vaporise petrol .............
unquote

take care twelfty. Oh yes it is.

some of the components of gasoline / petrol will start to boil off at a hundred degrees ... FAHRENHEIT, which is barely (not even) FORTY degrees Celsius.

Petrol is an unholy mixture of all sorts of stuff blended on the day to achieve the desired properties. Some of the ingredients would "boil off" at body temperature, others might stay liquid to as hot as 200°C.

Kerosene (paraffin to us) is usually stated as having a boiling point just under 150°C, though kero varies a lot, just as does gasoline / petrol


The problem we face is when ANY part of the added petrol boils (thus turns to gas/vapour) in our fuel systems. In a TD5, one wee bubble of vapour can bring down the whole system.

Be sure of this - ALL petrols / gasolines contain a large proportion of liquids with boiling points of 70°C or under.

Twelfty, in a warmed-up TD5, the NORMAL routine return fuel temperature AFTER the return fuel has passed through the fuel cooler is SEVENTY DEGREES CELSIUS. Heaven knows what temperature it is in the injectors and fuel gallery before it reaches the cooler.

Take care. Take advice.

Cant say you havent tried... ahhhh well

Ps Twelfty. I have some spare jet fuel uno from my weekend ride harrier jump jet. would you like it for your td5?
 
I'm trying to get a common man's summary on this fascinating topic. So, lets assume summer temperatures and no thinning agents, as we don't seem to have a legal one other than petrol.

In a disco td5, would it be fair to say that 50% road diesel mixed with any combination of SVO and filtered engine oil or hydraulic fluid will run OK?

Are there any tax issues with using other oils (apart from the 2500 litre per year record)

It's pretty simple to set up a filter system and store 200L of mixed oils to add at will when topping up with diesel.

Now that we are all going to be adding a splash of 2 stroke oil too, I'm looking forward to half price fuel (just seen it at £1.42) but don't want to be worrying about getting dipped.
 
Cant say you havent tried... ahhhh well

Ps Twelfty. I have some spare jet fuel uno from my weekend ride harrier jump jet. would you like it for your td5?


Hey! Save some of that for me too! UN 1883 I think
AVTUR is good stuff. Jet A and Jet A-1, and Jet B for cold days.
It is top grade Kero extremely well refined, and with no markers in it.

AVGAS is not so good for our 2011 diesel fuel brews, but we used a lot of it in our Lightweight Landies in the 1970s. AVGAS put at least 10mph on the top speed of a petrol Landy compared to that 'Combat-Gas' rubbish they issued in those days.
 
I'm trying to get a common man's summary on this fascinating topic. So, lets assume summer temperatures and no thinning agents, as we don't seem to have a legal one other than petrol.

In a disco td5, would it be fair to say that 50% road diesel mixed with any combination of SVO and filtered engine oil or hydraulic fluid will run OK?

Are there any tax issues with using other oils (apart from the 2500 litre per year record)

It's pretty simple to set up a filter system and store 200L of mixed oils to add at will when topping up with diesel.

Now that we are all going to be adding a splash of 2 stroke oil too, I'm looking forward to half price fuel (just seen it at £1.42) but don't want to be worrying about getting dipped.



Yes inded, I think that is a very fair summary.
MY EXPERIENCE with my TD5 Disco and Discomania's 300tdi, is that PETROL in the fuel is bad news. We have two TONS of recovered oils here to use up, and for both of us this was nearly disastrous because the "recovered oil" apparently contains quite a lot of petrol, including 2-stroke mix.

The immediate effect was bad starting, and a LOT of smoke when the engine is cold, and even in the 300 tdi after it is warmed up. It seems fairly clear that the presence of even a little petrol is affecting the combustion process for the worse.

We are working on the problem, but we are nearly convinced that petrol is the cause of the difficulty.

We know for SURE that used engine oils that are free of petrol are good clean fuels in both engines. In fact, both engines run better on a "pump fuel with used oil mix" than on straight pump fuel.
 
That's good to hear CharlesY. I will be watching out for deals on SVO and collecting some waste engine oil with a view to filtering to below 5 microns. I don't do a huge mileage but like the idea of giving the forks to the tax man!

At over £100 to fill up these days, it's got to be worth doing especially when towing. I could have a couple of barrels for settling and filtering on a gravity system to fill a final storage tank:)
 
not to be condescending or stating the obvious but isn't avgas used for it's purpose because it has a higher boiling point?

...........fair enough charlesy, i'll carry on using my method with no ill effects and you use yours,

on a similar subject where do you all get your veg oil from? the cheapest i've found is makros at £1/L unless you go for a bulk order of 1000 litres at £880 :eek:
 
not to be condescending or stating the obvious but isn't avgas used for it's purpose because it has a higher boiling point?

...........fair enough charlesy, i'll carry on using my method with no ill effects and you use yours,

on a similar subject where do you all get your veg oil from? the cheapest i've found is makros at £1/L unless you go for a bulk order of 1000 litres at £880 :eek:

fook makro go direct to a supplier!
 
also thinking about it.......... with the engine heating up the fuel to that temp surely it's viscosity is severely reduced anyway almost eradicating the need for petrol in the first place? though i think the temp needs to be about 95c + to get it towards diesel viscosity, then again you could remove the cooler you mentioned... depending on what the max temp it is before the cooler and it would i'd imagine be the right temp for good running all you'd need is something to improve cold starts!

just a thought

but you'd have to forget running it on diesel before putting the cooler back on if you get caught short
 
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also thinking about it.......... with the engine heating up the fuel to that temp surely it's viscosity is severely reduced anyway almost eradicating the need for petrol in the first place? though i think the temp needs to be about 95c + to get it towards diesel viscosity, then again you could remove the cooler you mentioned... depending on what the max temp it is before the cooler and it would i'd imagine be the right temp for good running all you'd need is something to improve cold starts!

just a thought

why not just fit a fookin fuel heater?
 
why not just fit a fookin fuel heater?

because it's already on the car? why would you heat up fuel then cool it down then reheat it?

also i have no idea who the supplier of makros is but i'd imagine they would want a bulk order
 
because it's already on the car? why would you heat up fuel then cool it down then reheat it?

ffs! the fuel heater heats the svo on its way to the injectors it improves cold running the fuel cooler is needed so you don't over heat your plastic fuel tank

i didn't mean use MAKRO's fookin oil supplier their are loads of companies that deal in veg oil, do a search on google and you will most likely find a local one, their is one about 5 miles down the road from me
 
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because it's already on the car? why would you heat up fuel then cool it down then reheat it?

also i have no idea who the supplier of makros is but i'd imagine they would want a bulk order

the reason the fuel is cooled is, it would melt the fookin "plastic fuel tank" without it :doh:
 
ffs! the fuel heater heats the svo on its way to the injectors it improves cold running the fuel cooler is needed so you don't over heat your plastic fuel tank
i know what a fuel heater does......... if you'd have bothered to keep up with the rest of the thread charlesy has said about 3 times the td5 heats up the fuel to 70c after the cooler which i am saying is nearly enough heat to make it thin enough to run without any thinning agents, if you could determine the heat of it before the cooler it may be a good temp for running svo, a plastic petrol tank would be an issue but is easily worked around with a metal tank and insulation and would be recouped in less time spent making it into bio diesel or the extra cost of adding thinning agents

even reducing the the efficiency of the cooler so it cools it to a happy medium would be good........

chill out mate your posts read like you're about to fall off your chair whilst typing

also most fuel heaters only heat to about 70c which would be no more than it already is
 
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i know what a fuel heater does......... if you'd have bothered to keep up with the rest of the thread charlesy has said about 3 times the td5 heats up the fuel to 70c after the cooler which i am saying is nearly enough heat to make it thin enough to run without any thinning agents, if you could determine the heat of it before the cooler it may be a good temp for running svo, a plastic petrol tank would be an issue but is easily worked around with a metal tank and insulation and would be recouped in less time spent making it into bio diesel or the extra cost of adding thinning agents

even reducing the the efficiency of the cooler so it cools it to a happy medium would be good........

chill out mate your posts read like you're about to fall off your chair whilst typing

i don't think you will be able to fit a metal fuel tank, they were type approved and fitting a non type approved fuel tank would void your insurance

the fuel cooler should be in the return so removing it over heat your fuel tank and wouldn't benefit you at start up when its needed

as SVO contains lots of fats and acids ...and fatty acids if you over heat it they will separate out leaving you with a thick white scum in your tank that will und up blocking your entire fuel system

this is the reason for the titration during production of bio-diesel to ascertain the amount of methanol/lye that you need to add to remove the fats and acids

and as for calm down... haha i'm not even dropping my smile
 
not to be condescending or stating the obvious but isn't avgas used for it's purpose because it has a higher boiling point?

...........fair enough charlesy, i'll carry on using my method with no ill effects and you use yours,

on a similar subject where do you all get your veg oil from? the cheapest i've found is makros at £1/L unless you go for a bulk order of 1000 litres at £880 :eek:


AVGAS = aviation gasoline = high grade petrol

AVTUR = aviation turbine fuel = high grade kerosene

AVGAS is every airport's nightmare.

It has a MUCH lower flash point and boiling point that any of the kereosenes, and is a very serious fire risk.
 

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