what is BIODIESEL?

Question

I NEED TO KNOW
WHAT IS IT ?
HOW IT'S MADE ?
WHY DO WE USE IT ?
ANDE WHAT ARE SOME GOOD AND BAD OUT COMES OF IT ?

Answer 1

Chemically, biodiesel is methyl ester - you take any fat (vegetable oils, animal tallow), which is fatty acids with glycerol (glycerine), replace the glycerol with methanol (or ethanol, but methanol is easier) and you get biodiesel.

Physically, a methyl ester is much better than the fat - fat sticks, freezes easily but methyl ester behaves pretty much like petro diesel. and biodiesel stays away from water as opposed to fat.

Simply put, if you take clean oil (or yellow grease, something made from waste oil or animal fat after a bit of processing), mix 10% methanol by volume add lye (NaOH), heat it up to 50-60 degrees celcius, leave it for an hour of continously mixing, you get biodiesel and glycerol. you wash this with a bit of water to get pure biodisel.

mostly we use it as an alternative to petro diesel - pretty good if we can use waste oil - somewhat ok for biodiesel from fresh oil (more income to farmers, but I have my reservations about using oil that we can use as food for running trucks :-)).

it is made in US mostly from soybean, caster (i think but there is a different name for it) in europe, malaysia and UK are experimenting with palm oil and india is experimenting with another plant called jatropa. basically you need anything that gives cheap oil.

goods: it is cleaner than petrodiesel. it is sustainable. emissions are overall better (except for NOx emissions), better efficiency of fuel

bads: it is a better solvent so it messes up parts in the vehicle that isn't designed for biodiesel, freezes a bit more easily than petro diesel. potentially completes with food. contains less energy per gallon than diesel, so you need a bigger tank or have less range.

there are tons of websites on the web - visit www.journeyforever.com. they have all the info you need.

Answer 2

Biodiesel is a safe alternative fuel to replace traditional petroleum diesel. Biodiesel is meant to be used in standard diesel engines and is thus distinct from the vegetable and waste oils used for fuel conversion to diesel engines. Biodiesel can also be used as a low carbon alternative to heating oil. Biodiesel is made from vegetable oil or animal fat (triglycerides) reacted with methanol or ethanol and a catalyst (lye), yielding biodiesel (fatty acid methyl or ethyl esters) and glycerin as a by-product.

For more information, click here
http://www.medors.in/bio-diesel/

Answer 3

Biodiesel is fuel produced from plant feed stocks.
common sources are rapeseed and corn and soybean. it is made by extracting the lipids from the plants and then transesterification process.

It is good because it reduces the amount of carbon that is added to the atmosphere.

There are lots of web sites on biodiesel out there.

Try wikipedia for starters.

Answer 4

It is the use of many oils that would stop up the oil traps at the restaurants . The oil they fry potatoes etc. The only problem is it must be filtered very good or it could cause u problems with your injectors. In a diesel the compression generates such heat that it will actually run on lube oil.