[rescue] ooo ! ebay catagory I just found

James Lockwood james at foonly.com
Fri Jul 12 12:30:26 CDT 2002


On Fri, 12 Jul 2002 CARL.P.HIRSCH at sargentlundy.com wrote:

> You want deals - I've been enjoying this for the past few weeks. I came
> across it while looking for Diesel 4x4s to convert to Biodiesel/Greasel.

Out of curiousity, why?

Rubber incompatability is an issue.  You probably want to bump up the
cetane number, but nitromethane is expensive, hazardous and pollutes.
Benzoyl peroxide is better but will make gelling much worse.

Last I checked, using biodiesel wasn't even at the breakeven point
compared with the energy necessary for production (not just farming, but
in the transesterification stage).  Make it yourself and you have an
assload (excuse the term) of glycerol to deal with.  It's nowhere near as
bad as ethanol from corn, though, which can only be even vaguely
economical with massive subsidies (it takes 70% more energy to produce the
ethanol than you get by burning it).

If you don't transesterify, you are playing games with a multi-thousand
PSI injection pump and injectors.  They are not designed to handle
glyceryl esters, the seals will get eaten over time.

I'd love to jump on the biofuels bandwagon, but I can't find a convincing
reason.  Sure, they're renewable, but they're a renewable energy _sink_.

-James



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