All self-respecting Arabs know that the best racing camels come from Australia.

Tilly, I once got hold of 5 litres of 95% ethanol (with no denaturant) and found that it was excellent alcohol for my intended purpose. If I ever got hold of some 200 proof juice the fuel I would make from it would not be poured into a vehicle.

The camel races at "Alice" are a real hoot. Disgusting creatures, but then you are what you eat.

My husband and I have followed this thread with interest. Last year we made two rather large (approx 200 gallons) batches of BD - one semi successful, the second much better, after much consultation with the members of this forum.

We have a large farm with 6 tractors, a combine, a backhoe and a 99 Jetta TDI. We do not have the WVO supply, nor the time to produce as much genuine BD as we would like (or could use), so we are exploring other options. Frankly we also have concerns about the risk and cost of handling the larger quantities of mehtanol.

We are especially interested in the Masters Formula and the idea of mixing kerosene with well filtered WVO.

Have there been any other developements regarding these topics? Is anyone but OCH experimenting with this stuff? Is it still working for OCH? Any suggestions, comments, warnings, etc would be greatly appreciated.

We are located in Canada, south of Montreal, on the US border.

Thanks

Kathy

Kathy, there was a thread a few weeks ago about "Thinning" WVO which you should read

Comparing Biodiesel to thinning

SGP

OCH how long does this need to cook? Any need to wash?

David

To wash or not may be individual preferrence.

David Norwood

Thanks for the reference SGP. I went to that thread, and found it interesting but a little difficult for my simple mind to follow. I will try to post my questions on that thread for now.

Appreciate the help.

Kathy

Kathy......... The only drawback to using my formula is the cost of the Ethanol,,however it should also be noted that by using my formula, that you have no reduction in the final output as you do with methanol,, in fact you have gained over-unity by the use of 25% Ethanol, rather than the standard 20% methanol...

The very best thing about this formula is that you have no risidual dropout (glycerine layer) as you have with a complete reaction..... My formula combines the glycerine together, as well as the small amount of KoH (4 grams per liter)into a very beautiful golden solution that makes for an excellent diesel fuel substitute...

Oil Can Harry

Oil Can Harry
I am looking for an ethanol supplier. Prefer 55 gal drum. Looking to try TMF. How long do I need to heat and mix?

David Norwood

Oil Can Harry

Are there any ill effects on the motors from using your formula? We have 6 older model (76 to 80 something) tractors (4 Case IH and an Allis Chalmers), a JCB Backhoe, and also a 99 TDI Jetta.

I seemed to detect concerns about this. Some references were made to direct injection vs indirect injection, is there a difference in reference to your fuel?

Do you mix your fuel with Diesel or do you run it pure? If you mix - at what percentage?

Appreciate you input

Kathy

Kathy.......... There are no "ill effects" of using my fuel, or using biodiesel made from methanol........ Most all of the older engine's are Indirect injection, which can take just about anything you can get into their injectors.....

My fuel mixes perfectly with any percentage of diesel,,but I run mine straight at 100%...

And david,, the amount of time to mix is about 10 min, and the heating is the standard 55C,,the ethanol is the hardest and most expensive to come by.....

Oil Can Harry

but don't forget most tractors are direct injection and they have shown horrible performance on staight veg oil.

Neutral

Thanks for the tip about the tractors. Any info on problems using BD, either the Dr. Pepper or the Masters Formula methods in the tractors? I presume we can mix the BD with diesel at pretty much any percentage - based of course on time of year (it gets pretty cold here in winter!)
We have quite a supply of oil to start processing before spring planting.

Oil Can Harry

Thanks for the info. I will keep you posted on progress - and any other questions we nay have. I will have to price out the ethanol in my area, and then I guess we are ready to begin

Kathy

neutral and [everybody]

Correct me if i am mistaken.
Indirect injection diesel engines have an IP with individual fuel lines for each cylinder and the IP and lines are outside the engine [you can see them].
Direct injection engines have an IP with one line from the IP to each [one or two] engine head and separate within the head[you cannot see them].

Kathy, the diesel tractors i have seen are indirect.

David Norwood

D N

No. The difference between a direct and indirect injection motor lies entirely in the design of the combustion chamber. This is completely invisible outside the motor. There is no difference in the way the fuel lines connect. There is one clue however: if the motor does not have glow plugs in each cylinder it is almost certainly direct injection.

Kathy

Oil Can Harry's fuel is extremely novel. Compared to biodiesel there is very little experience to draw on. OCH reports that his car, indirect injected, goes well and that his injectors stay clean. That sounds good. His fuel contains about 1/3 unreacted oil, 1/3 partly reacted oil and 1/3 biodiesel, some ethanol and soap.

There are many people using heated straight vegetable oil who report that their indirect injected motors go well. There are even some using heated veg oil in very recently designed direct injection motors who report no problems. Early designed direct injection motors running on unheated veg oil have almost always experinced severe engine damage.

So if you use OCH fuel in an old DI tractor you are somewhere in between the risks above. You are breaking new ground. There will be considerable interest in your results if you go ahead!

Biodiesel mixes in all proportions with petrodiesel and should cause no problems in your tractors.

[This message was edited by neutral on 08 March 2004 at 12:51 AM.]

On this thread I once reported reducing the amount of KOH in the Oil Can Harry method and suggested using 2.4g KOH plus titration rather than the one-size-suits-all 4g KOH of the original method.

I have now tried even less KOH, 1g plus titration, and it seemed to work, giving a good reduction in viscosity. This was really an experiment to determine how much ethanol was needed. I started off with the KOH dissolved in very little ethanol which caused immediate formation of soap gel. I gradually added ethanol while heating and shaking. I had to get pretty close to OCH's 250ml before it all dissolved. Whether the reaction had gone as far as it should have is still unknown. I don't have ready access to a gc. Perhaps someone with a viscometer might have a look at it.

A good way to check it would be to try it on new oil to avoid complications with FFA, and try say 1g, 2g, 3g and 4g KOH with 250ml ethanol per litre of oil, and see if the viscosity changed.

Excellent work Neutral..........

From my experiments, I have found that you must stay right at the 250 ml of Ethanol per liter to keep the mixture in solution.....

And you Neutral, went even further and reduced the amount of KoH down to 1+ grams,,,, Thats great work as even I had not thought of reducing the KoH........

However as was once stated to get by with less KoH you will need very good oil, and from most of the oil that I have collected it is not the case,, so while I am sure that you can get by with less KoH with great oil,, but most resturants use their oil to death,increasing the FFA's and making the use of more KoH necessary.........

Oil Can Harry

OCH

I did say 1g KOH plus titration

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