Advantages Of Biodiesel As An Alternative Fuel

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how to make biodiesel?

How can we make Bio-Diesel at home? does it work and is it cost effective?

Go to your local fast food joints. Collect their used fryer oil. Filter it, a few times to get all the solid food waste out. Pour it into your fuel tank and go. Mythbusters did this and noticed no difference between diesel and fryer oil.

How can i make a biodiesel possessing system. Or where can I get plans to make one.?

This could be a great investigatory project. You can refer to your country’s energy department agency or search the web for some informations.

What is the price of large bulk quantity of vegtable oil for biodiesel?

If I were to set up a biodiesel refining unit I would want fresh vegtable oil and I do not want to collect if from resturants. I want to buy at least 500 gallons at a shot to make it worthwhile. I want it domestically produced in the United States. Price and availability are an issue.

You would buy corn or wheat for this.
Depends on what your plant is made for.

Can anyone enlighten me as to how real producing algae on a large scale for biofuel.?

I see a number of companies – some publicly listed – claiming they are near commercialization of their various processes or technologies. Call me a doubting Thomas but are not some of these a scam and are not some others still so far away from the holy grail that algae to biodiesel is still a dream or cannot ever really be realized at scale?

Relatively high oil prices, advances in technology, and the Bush administration’s increased emphasis on renewable fuels are attracting new interest in a potentially rich source of biofuels: algae. A number of startups are now demonstrating new technology and launching large research efforts aimed at replacing hundreds of millions of gallons of fossil fuels by 2010, and much more in the future.

Algae makes oil naturally. Raw algae can be processed to make biocrude, the renewable equivalent of petroleum, and refined to make gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, and chemical feedstocks for plastics and drugs. Indeed, it can be processed at existing oil refineries to make just about anything that can be made from crude oil. This is the approach being taken by startups Solix Biofuels, based in Fort Collins, CO, and LiveFuels, based in Menlo Park, CA.

Alternatively, strains of algae that produce more carbohydrates and less oil can be processed and fermented to make ethanol, with leftover proteins used for animal feed. This is one of the potential uses of algae produced by startup GreenFuel Technologies Corporation, based in Cambridge, MA.

How to Make Biodiesel: the Three Choices of Using Biofuel

Biodiesel becomes more and more popular every year. It’s popularity probably derives from the fact that biodiesel is so cheap and relatively easy to be made. You can make it in your own backyard or kitchen. It is far better than the original petro-diesel, it’s cleaner and better for the environment and your health. Let’s talk about the three options you have when running a diesel engine on biofuel.

All three options can be used with vegetable oils, animal fat or both (it doesn’t matter if you use fresh or used oils):

- You can use the oil as it is

- You can mix the oil with another chemical supplement like kerosene, or gasoline or petroleum etc.

- You can convert the oil to biodiesel

Using the oil as it is can be clean and effective. Not to mention cheap also. But you have to make modifications to the diesel engine so that it is optimized for vegetable oil. You can find pre-modified diesel engines where you can use petro diesel, biodiesel and pure vegetable oil in any combination. There are engines with separate fuel tanks and a switch, you fill one tank with vegetable oil and the other tank with original petroleum diesel. Then you just turn on the engine using the tank with the original petroleum diesel and after a while you switch to the tank with the vegetable oil.

Mixing the oil with other supplements is your second option. Because vegetable oil is thick you mix it with a different type of fuel to make it thinner so that it flows easily into the combustion chamber of your diesel engine. Remember that using petroleum or kerosene to mix the vegetable oil, is not a clean option though. You can make various mixes (for example 20% vegetable oil and 80% of another diesel fuel). Some claim that if you use such a mix you have to preheat the engine, others just start the engine and go without preheating.

Your final option (and by far the best, in my opinion) is to convert the vegetable oil into biodiesel. Because biodiesel works in any diesel engine without the need to make any conversion or modifications to the fuel system or the engine itself. Just fill and go. Biodiesel is a much safer, clean, ready to use fuel that’s well tested. This option unlike the other two is backed by thousands of short-term and long-term research and tests by scientists around the world.

Markella M.
http://www.articlesbase.com/technology-articles/how-to-make-biodiesel-the-three-choices-of-using-biofuel-89045.html

What are the chemicals and equipment need to make a home made biofuel from cooking oil ?

I have a old ford pick up and the price of crude oil is outrageous and I want to divert my source of fuel like the bio diesel but I don’t know where to start converting cooking oil into biodiesel. Can anyone help me. I will trully appiciate it

A link to the "foolproof" biodiesel recipe is below.

According to an article I caught the other day, "yellow grease" is now going for about 33¢/lb, or around $2.50/gallon.  But with diesel fuel around $4.70/gallon around here, biodiesel still looks like a good deal even if you have to buy your grease.

Does any one know whether biodiesel (ethanol-fatty acid esters) can be run thru a normal refinery to make gas?

I am interested in knowing if biodiesel can be a feedstock for gasoline production.

No.

Gasoline is a mixture of small hydrocarbons. These are easy to split from larger hydrocarbons in a refinery. Petroleum diesel fuel is composed of larger hydrocarbons.

Biodiesel fuel is composed of the esters of fatty acids and methanol (sometimes ethanol), which are not easily broken down into a mixture of small hydrocarbons.

What manufactured cars run off of biodiesel or ethanol?

I am looking to buy a car that runs off of biodiesel and ethanol, but I’m having problems finding what cars are out there. I want them made this year and not personally converted, manufactured that way. Can anyone give me a list of what manufactured cars run off of one or the other alternative fuel listed?

Any diesel engine should run on biodiesel, however, it is not a good idea to put ethanol into your diesel engine because it won’t run and if mixed with diesel it will substantially reduce the flashpoint of the fuel which creates a significant safety hazard (think boom

For ethanol in a gasoline powered vehicle, you are probably already using E10 (gasoline blended with up to 10 percent ethanol by volume). If you would like to use higher blend levels or E85 (85 percent ethanol, 15 percent gasoline), then you are going to need to purchase a flexable-fuel vehicle (or FFVs). Most domestic car companies produce a number of models that are FFVs, but foreign manufacturers do not really produce many models in the US (for example, Toyota only has two models, the Tundra and Sequoia). Most FFVs are clearly marked that they are FFVs and have yellow gas caps that explicitly say you can use E85 in the vehicle. The vehicle manufacturers have lists of models that you can buy as FFVs, and this should be available on their website. Also try here:

http://www.e85fuel.com/e85101/flexfuelvehicles.php

Using ethanol-gasoline blends of higher than 10 percent will generally void any warranty on a non-FFV so don’t do it unless you’re ok with that.

Cheers

Has anyone secured a commercial algae fuel contract?

I have developed raw algae that now can be converted into various fuels, I.E., biodiesel, jet fuel, etc. I can ramp up to 25,000 gal/mo quite readily. I have a $400,000 investor ready to begin building. I have found distribution lies but I want to hear other’s experiences first.

There are several companies doing this: http://venturebeat.com/2008/05/29/sapphire-energy-gets-open-checkbook-from-investors-for-algae-based-gasoline/

http://www.algalbiomass.org/events/