There has been much said about biodiesel and the need or absence of the need to wash it. You need to wash it. It still contains several contaminants that need to be washed out. Methanol and sodium or potassium hydroxide do not mix well with diesel engines.
Once you have properly reacted your BD take out about 150ml of unwashed fuel and add about the sameamount of water and give it a good shake. If you have a complete reaction it should seperate into two distinctive layers in less than 10 minutes. If not you do not have a complete reaction and you are heading for washing problems.
Once you have made good fuel you can wash it using a stirrer on a drill or a pump to circulate the water and BD together. Wash time is dramatically reduced over bubbling or misting and seperation is usually complete within an hour. I use an oscillating lawn sprinkler held upside down over the BD and pumped into it to wash. It works great.
Word to the wise though, the temperature of the water is an important factor also. It should not be colder than room temp (about 17C) or it may cause the oil molecules to get closer together and that could cause problems with emulsion.
Also be sure that no glycerine by-product is getting in with the washing as that also contains soaps that will hinder.
Once properly washed, filter well and use.

Hey there,

welcome to the forum. But what are you doing in the connections sub-section?

Take care , and i hope you keep posting.

mark

once again we see assertions without proof. What proof is there that a little methanol can harm a diesel motor? A little soap? Do some research.

to be fair and with much respect for you neutral, we have heard from somebody who had a damaged fuel sensor which it seems was affected by methanol. this is not strictly 'in the engine' but it is in the fuel pump and was not at all cheap to sort out. this seems to be a potential problem with free methanol in fancier electronically controlled diesels. any experience on the boards? and how do we move the thread somewhere more correct?

Hello Legal Eagel, welcome to the Infopop Biodiesel Forum!

Unlike one of the other forums I have seen you post on where "truth" is posted by "Royal Decree" by the list owner, there has developed on this forum a system whereby when you post new information you post the justification for that information.
As an example, many people run tests and experiments and write up the test and the outcomes and then perhaps draw conclusions.
Many tests are empirical.
For an example many people have run their cars for over 3 or 4 years on unwashed biodiesel and suffered no problems.
Most people report never suffering fuel line failure
Most people report never suffering clogged fuel filters.
And so on.

Originally posted by Legal Eagle:
There has been much said about biodiesel and the need or absence of the need to wash it. You need to wash it. It still contains several contaminants that need to be washed out. Methanol and sodium or potassium hydroxide do not mix well with diesel engines.
This particular argument has had hundreds of posts and thousands of words written about it on this forum with many tests and experiments performed and lots of empirical information posted.
I strongly urge that you spend a few hours using the find feature on this forum and read what has already been posted about washing.
There seem to be both pros and cons when considering whether to wash or not.
If you have performed any tests which support your statement we would all love to see your test and conclusion.

Originally posted by Legal Eagle:
Once you have properly reacted your BD take out about 150ml of unwashed fuel and add about the same amount of water and give it a good shake. If you have a complete reaction it should separate into two distinctive layers in less than 10 minutes. If not you do not have a complete reaction and you are heading for washing problems.
Again, there has been a lot of discussion and testing and there are a number of variables.
In particular how long after the reaction you do the shake test, what the starting titration was and the hardness of the water all play an important part in the out come of the shake test.
Some diesel engines only require low conversion fuel. There is no sense in wasting money making high conversion fuel for these engines.
You can easily wash low conversion fuel if you use the correct method

Good luck

Rev Tilly KE (Actor)

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Tilly,

Legal Eagle,

Re:...Also be sure that no glycerine by-product is getting in with the washing as that also contains soaps that will hinder.

How are you to be sure that there is no glycerine in the bio before washing it ?
regards
dva

Abd yes, This may have been better posted in , Biodiesel > Making Biodiesel.

Jon_UK, This is a very interesting contribution. If it is true that sensors in a modern diesel can be harmed by methanol then the modern diesel has changed character in a very sad way. More info would be very welcome.

Jon_UK,
I also would be gratefull if you can supply a bit more info on the sensor in question. I suspect my old IDI Citroen will be ok, but I would like to be certain .
regards
dva

while I agree with some of what is being said (that you should substantiate your comments, which Legal Eagle didn't provide much substantiation for), I also don't think it's very useful to attack people who are just coming over from the biofuel list (which is full of bad science generally, and it's not quite the fault of people who primarily interact with biodieselers via that list that they are given crappy information). One of my really big concerns about that list is that newbies join it, stay there until something goes wrong with the list dynamics (and it will go wrong for you eventually given some of your past interactions with Todd Swearingen, Legal Eagle) -and then we lose them entirely because they've never gotten a chance to find the other forums or they've heard that we're all nasty and evil or something. It's really not helpful in that situation to scare them off of this forum since this is one of the best ones out there for homebrewing.

Mark

Mark,
I bet that if yopu were to post "It's really not helpful in that situation to scare them off of this forum since this is one of the best ones out there for homebrewing. " on that list, it would not be allowed and you would get a "final" warning. (assuming that you are currently allowed to post there)

No, I got banned from the Biofuel list. But I think it really helped Keith make himself look like an ass. By the way, if anyone has the transcript (ie like digest mode digests) of the last few days of that saga, please email it to me- I don't know how to use the nnytech archives to read old messages sequentially, and I wasn't checking email (it was the first few days of my tour I think) so I missed what happened exactly.

Mark

By the way, Luc, you shouldn't repeat the thing about wash tests being an indication of conversion as religiously as you do (you said something the other day at veggieavenger to the effect that 'if you have poor conversion you will have wash problems no matter what'), unless you back it up with something more comcrete. the wash test is extremely crude, and many factors influence washing, including the hardness of the water and any acidity in it. there is no evidence that conversion problems are the main problem with washes- soap is extremely common (I've backed this up by soap testing some wash tests and generally a bad result on a wash test corresponds to a high percentage of soap on the test. ( do a search here for 'testing for soap in unwashed biodiesel and glycerol' for the exact test, a particular titration used by peopel in vegetable oils science)

Below is a link to a discussion by a student of mine who did everything perfectly, and washed his fuel perfectly with no problems and with a perfect wash test, and then failed ASTM tests for conversion in a massive way.
http://biodiesel.infopop.cc/eve/forums?a=tpc&s=447609751&f=719605551&m=926101095 . His was didn't indicate any problems with his conversion.

It's more complicated than the Biofuel list dogma thinks.

Mark

If I have my information correct, the sensor in question was in a VP44 series Bosch fully electronic pump fitted to a Vauxhall--The guy had neen trying various blends of alcohols and veggy and it quit when running unwashed BioD. It may have been a build-up of problems from the previous blends, rather than the unwashed..

The sensor in question -the Pump Internal Position Sensor is a series of coils, connected to the pump's FPCM (ECU) by a flat ribbon cable-strip, similar to that type used sometimes behind dashboards--The horrible plastic stuff, with copper conductors embedded in it. Apparently, something (Meth/Alcohol?) attacked the connecting strip and de-laminated the plastic, causing the conductors to short.--New sensor time, as at the sensor end, its sealed with a potting/epoxy resin type stuff, No visible connections to work with.

Girl Mark, This aint a bad Forum for smaller Commercial outfits like us too!

H.C.II, At-- Diesel Pump Divn, SWC.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: High Compression II,

HC 11,
So, it was down to damage on the outside of the sensor, and nothing to do with bio etc passing it on the inside.
As this sort of damage could have been caused by almost any kind of chemical spillage onto the engine I reckon we can safely say that bio wasn't really at fault, just careless handling of fuel.
regards
dva

DVA,
The Pump Position sensor is INSIDE the pump case which is full of fuel.........

Its connected to the FPCM, (module mounted at pump upper case section--It forms the pump lid), by this ribbon cable, which is totally exposed to the fuel as that is also inside the pump..........

H.C.II, At-- Electronic Fuel Management Divn, SWC

HC 11,
So, not so good after all. Could someone with a similar set-up remove their sensor and let us know if there are any signs of damage ?
regards
dva

With a question like this it seems important to know what the sensor cable was embedded in. Clearly it may not have been damaged by the methanol but by the incredible solvent action of the biodiesel itself. It could be that this vehicle should not be run on biodiesel at all except perhaps at low levels like B20. If the damage was caused by the biodiesel itself then washing, which was how the topic started, is not relevant.

Neutral,
If it was caused by the biodiesel (and not methanol or something else in the fuel) then this does not bode well for the use of biodiesel in the more modern engines. Electronic sensors are gradually invading the engine control systems.
Oh for the days when the only electric part of the system was the fuel cut-out solenoid .
regards
dva

It appears it's not he sensor that is vulnerable but the cable to it. This should be easy for the manufacturer to rectify.

It also sounds like he ran blends with alcohols (plural) previous to the biodiesel, which isn't exactly normal behavior (or not for diesel owners in general anyway, maybe you Brits,etc in the land of White Spirit on TV have more gearheads experimenting with blends than we do here...). Plastics that are attacked by biodiesel or solvents don't necessarily show damage right away , so it's hard to say if it was the unwashed biodiesel or one of the other fuels that they'd run through their pump previous to the unwashed biodiesel. I guess taking a sensor and soaking it in biodiesel for a while would give you the data... or maybe just longeterm usage statistics if others have run this vehicle on B100 successfully without tryig other solvents in the system.
Mark