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Running a Diesel on Used Vegetable Oil

jg673

jg673

Member
Joined
Dec 4, 2005
Messages
16
Location
Fayetteville, NY
Does anyone know what they add to the used vegetable oil on the first episode of the first season to make it thinner so a diesel engine will run on it without any conversion? They say something like a "white spirit" but i'm not sure what they mean.

John
 
Thanks! Sorry about that I guess I should have just searched.

Has anyone tried this? Any suggestions? Does normal mineral spirit work?

John
 
Ive heard (not sure where, worth a google search if i had a deisel) that you can just filter the veg oil and use it without adding the white spirits... would deffinately be worth some research, as its new car time soon...
 
On the episode of Top Gear they said that the problem is the veg oil is too thick. You can run it on the veg oil if the engine gets warmed up first (with regular diesel... I think that is what the conversion kits do... run on diesel then switch to veg oil). I don't have a diesel now but I was thinking maybe I would get an old turbodiesel Merc to mess around with and try it out. The are good for a couple hundred thousand miles. Restaurants actually pay to have the stuff taken away, so it is like someone paying you to take fuel for your car.

John
 
if you are wanting to run just the recycled vegtable oil, there's a process to go through to "refine" it. you add methanol and lye to get rid of the bad stuff in it. check this website here to see the machines to do it and how.
 
Thanks for the link. What do you mean by "bad stuff"? Bad for the environment or bad for the car?

On top gear they just said to add the white spirit (i think it was 3ml/100ml) to thin it out, let it sit for about a week, and that is all. Then they run a Volvo diesel around the track on it after first emptying all the diesel fuel and then filling it (and bleeding the system, because its a diesel) with the vegetable oil mixture.

Has anyone else seen the segment?

John
 
bad for the car. glycerin forms at the bottom of the mixture as a separate layer after the methanol-lye mixture is added to the oil. (trying to remember how it works from a tv show) next, the methanol bonds with the oil, and you've got biodiesel. some people also water wash the biodiesel at least once, to furthur purify it. The TV show here was Trucks! on Spike TV. the host got all the equipment and showed how to make a batch, and used his own truck to put the biodiesel to test in. he called the truck "Tyre Fryer". :lol:

the top gear episode was 01x01 - 2002/10/20
 
nice, good old Trucks!
 
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