Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

[font=Times New Roman] [/font]
I am a newbie on this forum, but I have been interested in renewables for many years.
In 2000, I bought a "grid feed" solar power system and also started running my diesel car on used cooking oil.
In the past 7 years, my wife and I have covered in excess of 120 000km using very little petroleum fuel. We have 3 licensed, running diesel cars, 2 of which run on 100% used cooking oil. The other runs on biodiesel.

If anyone has similar interests, experiences to share on this subject, or would like to know more of what we have done to enable this to happen, please post here.

I will post another thread on Solar Power systems. Perhaps others here would care to share their experiences on that topic. If someone else starts the thread, I will be there (it doesn't need to be me who starts the topic).


Possibly there will be some interest in my ideas for Combined Heat and Power (CHP) systems as applied to BYAP. Imaging harvesting a crop of Barramundi and fresh tomatoes, watermelon, pumpkin and other summer crops in the middle of winter, all powered by a diesel generator running on used cooking oil.

That will be a later thread.

I look forward to reading of your experiences.

I am going to hit the hay, :Yawn:
Tony

Tony, tell us EVERYTHING!!!!!!!!

Would like to hear of your experiences using SVO, pros /cons/ limitations etc.

There was quite a discussion on another thread somewhere about it, even went into IV (is that right?) numbers i think

So many topics to cover, but yes it's getting late...


Love to hear some more about your car Tony, when I saw you drive off the other day I thought about the fact that it was running on recycled veggie oil... I have run hy Hilux on a mix of veggie oil and diesel, but not really sustainable stuff, just new oil from the supermarket... When diesel hit $1.45 a litre I found veggie oil for $1 a litre in the supermarket, but I haven't seen it that cheap in a while...

Have you found it hard to get supplies of used veggie oil??

Tony, I don't think I'd be alone in say, yes please, tell us more about your experience and knowledge of the use of cooking oil for diesel motors and generators....

Give us the whole run down mate..... from where you source the oil... conversion process for the oil, how to.... any mods needed to motors, generators, tuning etc....

Thats a pisser!

Right on!!! I am on the same.. no diesel cars but i am looking to generate power with world war 2 gasifier technology.. I have a gasifier built but right now its setup to generate heat as a green house heater.. I would be very interested in sharing ideas

My employer installed a used/waste oil furnace in the work shop this past winter. It got to the point where used motor oil was getting harder to dispose of. (Years ago they paid you for it, then it got to where you gave it to them for disposal, now it is to the point you are having to pay to have it hauled away!) It has cut down on his consumption of natural gas for heating, but if he was to get serious he could cut even more by doing things like insulating and re roofing the shop, two areas where things could be done.

We have a pellet fuel plant nearby that is supposed to go into operation sometime in the fall. They are planning on using just about anything that can be to produce the pellets. I understand they have been using chaff from grain, switch grass, sawdust and wood chips.

Well Tony, it is great your doing your bit! Keep at it, and hopefully more people will see ways that they can help.

Kevin

I trialed a diesel engine generator set for 1000 hours on 90 % coconut oil. Will tell all about the findings later.

I also helped develop and ran a gasifier in Thialand which was used for irrigation duty. Again I will provide details later.

are there any issues with burning used motor oil due to the ETBE MTBE and benzene?

BTW Tony .... I LOVED the Mercedes

Thanks so much for taking the time to show me the fuel system!

The deisel was orriginally designed to run on veggy oil, in particular peanut oil. Most engines need NO changes to run on oil. Perhaps a lower micron filter and a heater (veggy oil will gell when cold). I know of a company with enormous equipment that had a unit that would not shut off. They decided to just drain the the fuel and let it run itself dry, then work on it. This is when they discovered they had a major leak of oil into their engine. The unit ran on the oil until it ran dry as well, which of course caused other problems.

If you want a cheap fuel though. Go down to your local transmission shop and get all of their waste fluid for nearly nothing. The deisel engine will actually run cleaner. You will be scrubbing your engine, no excess exhaust, and you don't need a heater since it won't gel up in cold weather. I have very personal experience with this. The engines run smoother with the oil than with deisel, and even better with transmission fluid.

again, can anyone post any draw backs of using synthetic used oils?

No personal bad experiences, but I'm told Land Cruiser injector pumps don't like veggie oil - wrecks the seal surfaces, and no warranty cover cover can lead to a $3000 bill. Older setups like Fordson Simms and Perkins should give no problems because they never sealed properly anyway !

Depends how thick the oil was Big Mike

Hi,
Thanks for all of the interest.

For the past 7 years, I have not used petroleum fuels in our cars (my wife has needed to add some in emergency to get home).

I suppose I should give you all a link to allow you to study the subject a bit, so I don't need to write it all out for everyone here.
(Slow typist)
Vegetable Oil as a Diesel Fuel is a paper I co-authored on my experiences in 2000, using vegetable oil as my fuel of choice in a 1990 Mazda Capella diesel (imported second-hand from Japan - "Gray import").
There are many sites dealing with converting cars to run on vegetable oil or to make biodiesel. Google is your friend

I contribute to Forums dealing with renewable fuels (mainly in relation to biodiesel / Vegetable oil) and have avoided making biodiesel myself until last weekend. I avoided making biodiesel for our cars as I am frequently representing the members of the WA Renewable Fuels Association to politicians/bureaucrats and did not want to be the obvious choice to be selected for prosecution for illegally making biodiesel and avoiding the excise on that fuel. While excise is due on any biodiesel made for use in an engine, there have been no prosecutions of small producers for failing to pay this excise.
There is no excise on using used or new cooking oil as diesel fuel unless it is added to an excisable fuel, in which case the whole blend is excisable.

For my Mercedes 300D (and the Capella before it), I installed a second fuel tank for the veggie oil, additional fuel lines from this tank to the engine bay, a fuel filter for the oil and a changeover valve, controlled from the dash, so that I can select the fuel to use.
I also installed a coolant/fuel heat exchanger to heat the oil to around 70 - 80°C. Heating the oil to this temperature range reduces its viscosity and allows it to flow almost as fluidly as diesel.
In my car, I heat both diesel and veggie, so that the Injector Pump (IP) is heated by the diesel during the warm-up, before changing to veggie oil.

In use, the engine is started on diesel (I actually use biodiesel for starting) and driven until the coolant temperature gauge indicates that the engine is at normal operating temperature. I then select the vegetable oil fuel and continue driving.

Near the end of the journey, the fuel selector is switched back to diesel to purge the vegetable oil from the injector pump and injectors. This ensures that there is liquid diesel fuel available for cold starting.

There are a number of issues with using vegetable oil as a fuel:

• some vegetable oils solidify at the storage temperature of your vehicle resulting in "solid" fuel. This cannot be pumped and needs to be melted for use. If these oils are the only ones available, more heating of the veggie fuel system will be needed.
• some IPs are intolerant of cold vegetable oil, resulting in a sheared main shaft of the IP. By ensuring that cold vegetable oil can never be allowed into the IP or to remain in the IP as it cools, this failure mode can be avoided.
• the vegetable oil should be filtered to levels better than the filtration rating of the vehicle main fuel filter, so that this filter is not clogged by the vegetable oil and so that particles which could damage the IP are excluded from the vehicle fuel.
• Vegetable oil can carry water in suspension or as dissolved water. Care must be taken to ensure that the oil is as dry as possible to prevent damage to the IP.
• There are more, but this is enough to consider at this stage.

I have needed to remove the injectors on my cars a couple of times to have them serviced, due to a build up of carbon on the face of the injectors. This was done at around 50 000 km intervals. (injector service is normally a 100 000 km service interval).
I also change the engine oil at 5 000km, to ensure that there is no build up of un-burnt vegetable oil in the engine oil. This does happen with diesel, but the diesel evaporates off where the vegetable oil does not.
I perform my own vehicle servicing and check fuel, coolant, brake, vacuum and washer hoses during my service of each vehicle. By checking these hoses, I get no surprises during operation. (there have been hoses which have degraded in operation. Whether these degraded due to age, or fuel type, is yet to be seen, but there is no general degradation of the fuel hoses on my vehicles.

I will soon reply to the questions you have posed above.

Regards,
Tony