Roddimus Prime

I watched a program about biodiesel and thought it was great that they were offering DIY kits for the home user. Here's what I came up with.

http://www.biodieselsolutions.com/pr...uelmeister.asp

The main kit is $3K and produces diesel fuel at a cost of $0.56 - $0.70 per gallon. It produces 40 gallons a day and takes less than 1 hour of hands-on time to get it going.

Let's try some math to see if it's worth it...

Assume I get an average of 40mpg (nice round number)
Current Diesel price is about $2.40/gallon
biodiesel cost is estimated @ $0.70/gallon
You assume an average of 15,000 miles per year

That leaves 375 gallons of diesel a year. Now to figure the cost of those 375 gallons

375 gallons @ $2.40 = $900 a year for pump diesel

375 gallons of biodiesel @ $0.70 = $262.50 (+the $3,000 set-up cost).

You would save $637/year in fuel costs so it would take 4.8 years for the savings of biodiesel to overcome the high price tag of the initial purchase.


I still think Biodiesel is the way to go to save the future but the price of DIY hardware will have to come down before it's a viable alternative for an individual.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~

Now those are just rough estimates. In my personal situation we use our TDi for every bit of driving we do. It also gets 42-46mpg. We put about 20-24K miles a year on the car. So using the new numbers I (personally) would save about $1,011.50 a year in fuel costs.... BUT..it would take 3 years for me to just break even. Anything after 3 years is just gravy though.

scotty878

I think biodiesel is an awesome concept...Instead of using what were running out of, and creating waste, it uses what was waste and creates no waste as far as I know! I think if it starts to be more readily available, I could see it changing things!

And I just thought...If I owned a gas station, I'd buy a few kits, sell it lower than real diesel but more than actual cost of biodeisel, and hopefully make some money back quickly!

Roddimus Prime

I'm already 2 steps ahead of you. On my local raceing forum there are several diesel owners who have expressed interest in buying biodiesel from me at a lower cost.

I figured if I made biodiesel for $0.70/gallon and sold it for $1.50/gallon even I could turn a profit of $32 per tank. It takes approx. 1 hour to make and you let it stir overnight.

someone with a 40 gallon dually pick up truck could fill up for $60 which is $40 less than what it normally cost. These are all just REAL conservative estimates.

Diesel is here about $2.53/gallon....so you save more the higher the gas prices get.


another cool thing about bio is that you dont have to make it from waste oil. You can make it from Soy beans also. This is the BIG benefit to biodiesel here in the states. We have farmers getting paid by the government NOT to plant crops. If they were to produce Soy beans and made vegitable oil from the soybeans we could SEVERLY lower diesel fuel prices in the states by a lot. It would mean farmers could be productive again, everyone would save at the pumps and the best of all.....biodiesel produces 90% LESS emissions than standard diesel.

Also, they smell like fry cookers going down the road.

scotty878

Damn, seems like your well on your way to working things out! Looks like youve been doing your research too!

And yeah, I've heard they smell good, lol....

ghettopro

The whole Biodiesel thing intrests me in a great way.
I find it funny how you said they are paying farmers not to plant crops, sounds to me like our gov't are a greedy bunch of people and would rather keep the prices higher and affect not them but the people...and then they want to push on emissions controlling, to make things more expensive to us....i hate the gov't

I thought you had to have completly different engines to be able to use bio-D?
sorry for sounding stupid, but im not very up to date on the whole matter


I just think its great that we have found a way to make a cleaner and cheaper fuel, b/c thos gas/elec cars kinda defeat the purpose of cleaner emissions...its just less run time of gas fed engine?


Fry Cookers? are you serious? that would be good for resturaunts as well, people drive down the road...get hungry...and go eat!!

Roddimus Prime

I secured a supplier of clean peanut oil....20 gallons a day. for free. This will be a cleaner burning oil, smell better and basically be more oil than I can process in a day.

Here are some quick bio-d facts

75-90% better emissions than petroleum diesel

better smell

no black crap all over your bumper

costs only about $0.70/gallon to make (that price includes chemicals needed to process)

RECYCLES WASTE PRODUCT TO FURTHER HELP THE ENVIRONMENT

the waste byproducts of biodiesel can be combined with WATER to make a great degreaser/shop cleaner.

No changes have to be made for this to work in ANY diesel vehicle. (older cars with rubber fuel lines will deterioriate after time but can be replaced with silicone line cheap.)

scotty878

I read somewhere that just for start up and warm up, that regular diesel was necessary because the oil wont get hot enough on its own, and that once its warmed up you could just flick a switch on a system and it'll switch to the oil...Is that required?

And ghettopro, any diesel engine will work...And about the farmer thing...It's all about inflation. The Gov. pays the farmers to not plant crops so the prices of the food the plant will rise so it can help the economy, and the money they pay them is obvously for lost profits on what they dont plant...

ghettopro

ehh, I dont understand economy, so I guess what ever works for them, i suppose, haha

Why dont they just replace deisel with bio-D at gas pumps since it is easier to do and all that?

Roddimus Prime

The thing you saw about warming up the oil was only because it was a bare oil they used in the car. It won't produce the power or mileage of TRUE biodeisel.

Biodiesel uses oil, lye and ethanol to create a true diesel fuel. The guys who rigged a VW to run on oil are just using straight oil and compression burning it. It works but I wouldn't trust it everyday in a new car.

The government has grants they give to farmers that "cant support themselves"....it's like farmer welfare. The farmers just do nothing and collect government checks. They can make more doing nothing than working hard and creating produce. If the government would cut that out we could have farmers producing 100% of our diesel fuel in the US (and Iraq...tanks run on diesel btw)

Also, Soy is used for SO many things besides just making oil. Soy is the greatest crop on the planet right now IMO. Between plastics and soy there is nothing we can't make or do.

zerocover

That bio deseil kit is a scam.
You could just take a 40 gallon drum and mix in the chemicals and oil let sit and filter.
You just wont get a cool pump..

Its a very simple concept. All your doing is removing the water soiluble particales from the oil.
http://www.dancingrabbit.org/biodiesel/newoil.php

Roddimus Prime

The kit isn't a scam it's a complete system that includes detailed instructions for PH testing and measuring the appropriate amounts of lye and Ethanol. It also comes in a neat and easy to use package that has a quality agitator/pump.

I agree it's very high priced and can be made for less but It's a quality product that is proven to work. On something critically important like this I think it's better to spend the money to do it right.