[Vwdiesel] Biodiesel vs Waste Vegetable Oil

[James Hansen]

William J Toensing wrote:
> I reciently bought a new device, plant, machine (what is the correct
> name?) to convert new or waste vegetable oil into biodiesel on a home
> use basis.

Usually called a reactor I think.
You can tell your neighbors about the reactor you are building in the 
basement, see how long it takes for the homeowner's association to pay 
you a visit...

  The main cost & possible problem that I want your opinion
> on is the use of methonal which I am told brings the cost of
> biodiesel to around .70 cents a gallon. However, after buying this
> plant, someone warned be that methonal is very toxic & breathing the
> fumes could damage your lungs, cause cancer, etc. Since I already
> have CLL or Chronic Lymphytic Lukimia which is responding well to
> chemotheraphy, I don't need any more health problems. What are the
> safe ways of handling the methonal?

The racing world uses methanol as fuel in engines.  It's also known as 
wood alcohol, used in the lab for bunsen burners, etc... also as the 
cheap gasline de-icer.
With normal safe handling precautions, I can't see it as being more 
risky than regular automotive fuels.  It is a tad more volatile, but 
does not possess any benzine rings that are particularly nasty in 
regular fuels from the carcinogenic standpoint.
Gee, in the racing gig, the stuff gets handled pretty sloppily, and 
quite frankly, my gut reaction is that is significantly more safe from 
the bioactive standpoint as compared to car gas or diesel.  Wood 
alcohol, and it's near cousin grain alcohol (ethanol) is pretty benign 
as things go.  You don't want to drink the methanol, it's capital B bad, 
but ethanol gets consumed over a fairly large sample size, and it's only 
side effect seems to be to temporarily lower I.Q. and the stuff that 
originates from barley makes you pee more frequently as well.


> 
> With the above in mind, I have been thinking of modifying my 1981 VW
> Dasher wagon to run on waste vegetable oil (wvo). Is this Dasher a
> good candidate for conversion to run on wvo or should I consider
> getting a good used Mercedes Benz (1979 to 1985) 240D/300D/300SD? Do
> I need to install a second tank for the wvo & use the engine coolent
> to heat the wvo.

Depends on where you live and ambient temps.
see below...


  Or are the conversions which heat a special filter
> inside the engine compartment plus the injection lines & claim you
> can start, run, & stop using wvo OK? www.greenbenz.com &
> www.lovecraftbiofuels.com  advocate a single tank sustem which  say
> you can with their kits. They also say you can  switch from wvo to
> new vegatable oil or streight petroleum diesel or intermix them in
> the same tank.

If you are where it's really warm, maybe, but not really.  Viscosity is 
the enemy.  Fairly large changes in viscosity occur with small changes 
in temperature in veg oil.   Fuel does not react like that, it has 
fairly small changes in viscosity.
Read this;
  http://www.frybrid.com/svo.htm

It has some good info on viscosity and heating there.

> 
> Also I recall reading somewhere you should not use hydroginated
> cooking oil. When getting wvo, how do you tell the difference other
> than what the restaurent tells you they are using? Comments? 

The hydrogenated stuff is stiff at ambient temp, and will look like lard.
(think hydrogenated vs non-hydrogenated peanut butter)
the non-hydrogenated has liquid oil on it's surface, the hydrogenated 
doesn't separate because it does not flow, and remains mixed into the 
peanut butter.
-james