Anyone use WVO?

[Omniata]

I was only asking how everyone using WVO got the actual oil!

In that case, I used to collect from a couple of small independent local takeaways.

Quality was variable, but I was only filtering rather than actual processing.

That used to get stuck in the 300tdi disco mixed with diesel...

Same call here, be wary though, you want "liquid", not solid as used in most chip shops

 

[Arash]

Common rails and straight veg (wvo or svo) are a no no. You need to twin tank them. Start on diesel until the engine is upto temp, then switch over to diesel. When you are about to get to your destination you need to switch back to diesel and purge the fuel system.

There are 2 issues with using veg in a common rail without a twin tank:

1, cold veg will cause ring gumming when used in a direct injection engine, older diesels had a pre injection chamber that warmed up the fuel before going into the cylinder.

2, veg is more viscous than diesel and will cause premature wear on the injector pump of common rail engines. When its preheated by a heat exchanger in a twin tank thats upto temp, it has much closer viscosity to diesel.

Veg oil and bio diesel are 2 different things, biodiesel goes through a process called transesterfication to produce fatty acid methyl ester, this removes the glycerine/glycerol from the veg oil by using a catalyst (sodium or potasium hydroxide) in the presence of an alcohol, usually methanol. Most of the catalyst and the alcohol as well as the glycerine are removed from the finished fuel. It will then need filtering to remove soap (one of the byproducts) as well as other impurities.

Get an old xud9 engine (xz or 306) and have a play about with running them on veg before risking a newer vehicle on the stuff.

Also always carry spare filters and the tools to change them by the side of the road as you can get filter blockages.

There is no easy way of getting collections, you have to put in the leg work and ask around. As I have already mentioned getting a website and having links with other collector websites gets the best results.

Hope it helps.

 

[julianf]

Wmo does not benefit from the same tax break as vwo/svo/bio. Iirc there is also no exemption with regard to the environment agency as to being a registered waste carrier (somewhere in t19 - from memory)

I looked into it for a static engine, and, whist I have zero personal experience, what I read made some sense -

Even aside from any pre combustion issues, there are reports of the combustion products themselves being abrasive. Is the soot causing wear in extended (ie static engine) use.

This, to me, seemed believable. If you read as to how commercial reprocessing plants work, one of their first stages is to 'break' the pH buffers (using extremes of ph, I think - I'd have thought they would just distill, but it seems not)

The buffers are, I believe, calcium compounds - ie just what you might expect to result in abrasive residue when burnt.

Note - the above (except for the t19 stuff) is regurgitated information from an area that I have no personal experience in.

 

[julianf]

You might want to supply a set of links to other forums so people can be directed there for clarification

@julianf

Vegetableoildiesel is the busiest.
Biopowered is less so, but has a good wiki for instant access to reliable information.

 

[Rig Pig]

Here's a query for those in the know
(I've tried reading some guides and left more confused than ever)
Saab has the 1.9 150 CDTI Fiat engine in it, no DPF on it - what would it take to run it on SVO (do not have the time to play with WVO sadly) and I know where I can buy SVO at a decent price

Any information to clear things would be helpful.

As other have said, not a good plan with the eye watering price of modern fuel injection components and DPF on later cars SVO is quite likely to cost far more than it saves at the pump.
A mate has an old school 200tdi disco that has been fed SVO / diesel mix for years without any problems - solid old Bosch pump.

 

[julianf]

I have a (real life) friend who has run his vag PD engine on wvo for years now.

His attention to detail is high. He has the car twin tanked, and has a water injection system fitted.

When he was low on fuel, I offered to give him some of my bio, and he turned me down, as UE did not want to risk it, as he had never used it before, and was some way from home.

I know that the PD system isn't common rail, but there are similarities. Certainly without my friends attention to detail, he would have issues - but it shows what can be done with care.

 

[Imakora]

I ran my Landcruiser on WVO for a few years. I have a twin tank system and was going to fit water injection, but never got round to it. I run her mostly on diesel now as oil is not as easy to get as it used to be. I'm sure you are all aware of the dangers of engine oil polymerisation. I knew of it, changed my oil regularly, but went through a period of a couple of months when I was only doing short frequent journeys. I was switching over to oil too soon and ended up seizing the engine. The oil in the sump was like wet silicon seal.
I rebuilt the engine and any savings I had made went up in smoke.
Brilliant car, stupid owner!

 

[8ob]

I have a (real life) friend who has run his vag PD engine on wvo for years now.

His attention to detail is high. He has the car twin tanked, and has a water injection system fitted.

It does make you wonder at what point he will see a return on investment especially with concessions stopping at 2500ltr.

Bob

 

[Shox Dr]

The PD are a bit of an oddity...

I had seen reports of them being able to be run on a single tank veg system, but I'm not sure of the validity. Twin tanking seems viable.

'Proper' biodiesel should cause them no concerns just running as-is.



Really, as I see it, there are two possible reasons to get into running on veg /home made bio (not mutually exclusive).

1. Save money.
2. For the technical challenge.

When I ran veg it was a pure 1.

I had a little 2 in the background, but never the time or inclination to take it any further.

I ran a 300tdi on new rape seed oil, while it was 40ppl, ran like a scolded cat.

@8ob. 2500ltrs is approx 550gal, so at a modest 25mpg you'll get 13k miles.
Thats £3k in pump diesel, istr the costs for turning wvo into bio was around 28ppl, of you could save £2300. Few yrs ago, so prices will have increase so saving will be less

 

[Imakora]

I can't remember exact prices, but the twin tank kit cost around the £ 700 mark, I fitted it myself and was buying WVO for 10p/litre. I spent £450 on a centrifuge which added to the cost, but at 23mpg I thought it was worth it. However, not happy with the second tank being a plastic jerry can in the boot, I went and bought an OE auxilliary tank. As the spare is rear mounted on a swinging frame, the tank fits neatly under the boot. The water injection system was to be homemade, and I purchased all the bits in the US, so it was quite cheap. I'll get round to fitting it one day, once I've learned to TIG weld and install an intercooler as well. The rebuild was expensive, but as I bought most of the spares in Dubai, I saved a small fortune while spending a large one. Understandably, my wife was less than impressed......

 

[Arash]

That reads as though direct injection means common rail - it doesn't...

Effectively there are 3 main injection systems as far as veg planning goes:

Mechanically controlled with indirect injection.

Mechanically controlled with direct injection.

Electronically controlled common rail.


Personally, I wouldn't consider running veg on a common rail, even twin tanked - everything I ever found pointed toward them being wholly unsuitable for even blended veg for a number of reasons.


Within the first two though there are also subtypes that are more or less suitable for veg running, mainly based on type/make of pump. Inline pumps (i.e. as on old mercs) are 'best', bosch rotary pumps second but may suffer from seal trouble (last time I looked, up to £700 to get rebuilt with viton seals, or about £35 for the seals for diy) and the absolute worst, Lucas rotary pumps.

While the XUD is a good candidate, some of them came fitted with lucas pumps so can cause problems unless you switch it out.

I had a 300tdi (direct injection) that had no problems at all running veg - I put in a new filter after about 1000 miles and that was it, I stopped bothering carrying spares.

DI engines are supposed to benefit from twin tank, but due to the way they operate and my personal vehicle usage I'd be running 80%+ on diesel anyway so I simply blended at up to 90% veg (summer - in winter it complained about starting on anything over about 50%).


I stopped doing it because the price of pump diesel dropped significantly and the cost/benefit stopped making much sense - if the price goes back up, then the wife's 106 may well start getting a more omnivorous diet

I don't know of any engine in a car light van that is a common rail but indirect injection. Its the high rail pressures that cause an issue with cold veg.
You can run direct injection rotary pumps on veg with out a twin tank but you increase your chances of ring gumming. Did it on a golf 90hp tdi and got polymerised engine oil for my troubles. You can also get engine runaway (all well documented on the vegoil forum by me and other people).

I have got a HDI citroen that may become surplus to requirement soon which may get tortured by veg!!! hahaha

 

[Crater Creator]

All this talk of ring gumming's putting me off my dinner.

 

[knighty]

I did 80k on veg in a common rail sprinter and 100k on veg in a common rail Iveco

(could actually be the other way around... was deffo 80k in one and 80k on the other)

both were twin tanked, and never had a problem with either of them running veg

 

[julianf]

It does make you wonder at what point he will see a return on investment especially with concessions stopping at 2500ltr.

Bob

I dont think he pays for his oil, so, at half the yearly limit, he is still looking at over £1k saving per year. Ive know him at least 4 years, so, again, at 50% of the annual allowance, that could be £4k.

His hardware certainly did not cost him £4k, so he is well past the payback region.


For a while i was running our central heating boiler on bio. About two or three winters. I think this was when kerosene was about 40ppl or so, and my bio was costing me about £25ppl.

Hardly a huge saving, but, if you look at it in terms of doing a bit of time in the garage with the reactor, and then having a house that can be (almost) 2x as warm through the winter, then it seems a bit better.

In reality, however, i was somewhere that prohibited me getting kerosene deliveries, and bio was just simpler for me.

 

[cliff366]

I found Chinese and Indian takeaways were the best bet - probably used to get about 10% solids that skimmed easily and maybe a further 5% ish that got wasted through filtration.

If properly processing you could cut the wastage apparently.

I found Chinese the worse round here as a lot use the older oil to flash fry there meat so always had a lot of water content
The tai place I get it from even in these temps 80% is liquid summer it's 98%

 

[cliff366]

Nor do I, but there are plenty of mechanical pump direct injection.

It's not just rail pressure that causes the problem - lots of common rail have things like optical fuel sensors which don't like veg oil for instance.

In my 300tdi, I had issues with not starting - a combination of temps under 5 degrees and a blend richer than 50% and it wouldn't start as the low pressure lift pump didn't have the oomph to supply the Bosch injection pump. I did lots of miles (and mainly short journeys too) and never had any ring or oil problems at all.

My oil vw td never had any probs in running 75/25 in winter
put a tdi in it same engine but slightly diff inj and pump setup and hates starting now on 25/75 smokes like a trooper so will be twin tanking it soon

 

[normspanners]

Does anyone use "black diesel"?

People in the states run 100% filtered ueo.

I'm not entirely sure whether it's legal here at all, diluted or otherwise, for road use.

There are a lot of people running on used engine oil,------- from their own engine----- lots of vw's shoguns etc etc the diesel in the tank is black due to the fuel pumps seals sucking in the engine oil