A Beginner's Guide to Biodiesel and SVO

It all started for us just before Valentine’s Day, asking a friend what she planned to get for her husband. “A centrifuge,” she replied, explaining that her engineer/husband had converted their diesel vehicles to run on vegetable oil and a centrifuge was just the thing to prepare waste vegetable oil for use as diesel fuel.

Not very romantic, but the idea of an alternative-fueled vehicle resonated, particularly for Vic, who, for a while now, has been imagining an overheard conversation between two Saudis who rejoice in his inefficient driving habits: “Look, Ahmet, the foolish American is charging a red light! Quick, pump more oil and charge him dearly for it!”

Vic ended up talking with Ray Holan who’s done a number of conversions. His book (Sliding Home: A Complete Guide to Driving Your Diesel on Straight Vegetable Oil, 365 pp, $25, available thru http://www.plantdrive.com) marked him as conversant with the subject and willing to spend time on an article for Cool Cleveland.

Holan started by differentiating between biodiesel and running a vehicle on straight vegetable oil (SVO). “Biodiesel is a fuel that is made from vegetable oil just as cheese is made from milk. Biodiesel can be made from various sources, animal tallow for instance, but commercially it’s usually made from vegetable oil, either fresh pressed or from filtered waste vegetable oil. A home brewer usually uses waste oil (WVO) because it’s free.”

And how do you make biodiesel? Holan says he’s made a couple of thousand gallons himself, so he gave us what he described as a “Reader’s Digest version of the process.” A catalyst made from methyl or ethyl alcohol and either sodium hydroxide or potassium hydroxide mixed with vegetable oil makes for a reaction called transesterfication, which yields, after settling, “a layer of honey-colored glycerin with a layer of amber-colored raw biodiesel floating on top.”

Is the process hazardous? “Absolutely,” replied Holan, who listed 3 primary safety issues. “The ethanol and methanol are highly flammable, you’ve got a disposal problem with the toxic glycerin, and you’ve got the caustic sodium hydroxide or potassium hydroxide to deal with.” We found the complexities and hazards of the process completely daunting, but for Holan “It’s definitely doable.”

Or you could just buy your biodiesel from a producer. “Center for Alternative Energy is a commercial biodiesel producer right here in Cleveland down in the old LTV in the flats; they went on line in spring of 2007.” According to Holan, once you have biodiesel fuel processed to American Society of Testing and Materials standards, you can use it in any diesel manufactured after 1996 with no conversion whatsoever.

“Older vehicles used butyl rubber hoses which break down with biodiesel. People refer to it as a ‘biodiesel conversion’ which is really a misnomer. It’s more of an upgrade, if you will, simply a matter of popping off a few old hoses and replacing them with the newer viton hoses.”

We understand from our reading that profit margins for biodiesel producers are slim-to-none, particularly using virgin soybean oil as a feedstock. Prices per gallon tend to run close to regular diesel, which is currently slightly higher than regular gasoline in our area. For real opportunities for savings, do-it-yourselfers look to a so-called two-tank conversion in order to run their diesel vehicle on SVO.

“In the case of biodiesel, you’re converting the vegetable oil into something that you can use in an unconverted vehicle. In the case of vegetable oil, you’re taking an unconverted material, the vegetable oil, and putting it into a converted vehicle,” Holan explained.

“In order to run SVO in a vehicle you have to provide a heated auxiliary fuel system because vegetable oil is 10 – 15 times thicker than diesel. The fuel injectors in a diesel engine would jam up with high viscosity unheated vegetable oil. Think of a Windex spray bottle with olive oil in it – it wouldn’t work very well.”

And how to heat the SVO? “Much of the energy generated in an internal combustion engine – some ungodly amount, maybe 40 – 50% -- gets cooled off by the radiator, so the SVO tank is heated by a line from the radiator. Everybody’s familiar with the little one-cup heating element we used in our dorm rooms. The cool thing is that that the SVO is generally about the same viscosity as diesel oil at about 170 – 185 degrees F, and guess what your car’s cooling system generally operates at?”

For every day operation, you start your car using regular diesel and switch over to SVO after the cooling system has heated the SVO to the requisite temperature, usually after about 5 minutes. Similarly, you need to run your vehicle on straight diesel for another few minutes before turning off the engine for prolonged periods lest the SVO congeal in the engine. So, some mindfulness is required in operating on SVO, but the relatively affordable conversion and the low tech process of prepping used cooking oil would seem to open the door to significant savings.

“Fifteen or so companies make commercial conversion kits, including http://www.goldenfuelsystems.com, http://www.greasefuel.com, and http://www.plantdrive.com. Full Circle Fuels in Oberlin installs predominantly Golden Fuel Systems. A do-it-yourself kit goes for about $800 - $900. Parts only would run you about $400 - $500 at an auto parts store.”

Prepping used cooking oil, according to Holan, “is the subject of lots of rigid and wildly varying opinion. Essentially you have to remove particulate with a bag filter or a pump through a canister filter; or you could use a centrifuge, though that’s generally more expensive. You can remove water by heating but with time and gravity, it’ll stratify, settle out, in 1 – 2 weeks. Most people who do this in earnest have a first in, first out system. It’s a matter of what works for you.”

And costs per gallon? “50 cents per gallon pays you for your time, your filters, and other consumables.” That would be less than the $3 per gallon we’re paying at the pump. It would also silence Ahmet and his companion, those 2 hypothetical Saudis living rent-free in Vic’s head.

“Where this really makes economic sense is with fleet vehicles. An operator like Great Lakes Brewing looks at fuel costs of thousands of dollars a month and converting his fleet to SVO is a no-brainer.” This all sounds great. Except - for a couple of people who can’t even change their own oil, it sure sounds daunting. Also – what does happen to the toxic wastes? We’d like our revenge on Ahmet best if we knew it wasn’t creating a new and different ecological problem.

From Cool Cleveland contributors Elsa Johnson and Victor Lucas vicnelsaATearthlink.net

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