What do I need to do to make my car run on biodiesel?

Question

I have heard how people can get their cars, and even buses, running on vegetable oil. I want to know if I can do that to my car, and how do I go about doing it?

Answer 1

You can theoretically get your car to run on vegetable oil now without making any changes. The question is how well the car will do long term.

You cannot make a gasoline engine run on any type of diesel fuel.

Take care,
Troy

Answer 2

Nope! Nothing. Nada. Just fill with Biodiesel and drive!!

I did modify one car, but that was to heat the fuel to run straight vegetable oil. For biodiesel just fill and go!

On one vehicle, the 190 diesel mercedes, I had to change the fuel filter after about 6,000 miles of biodiesel, because I noticed a slight loss of power when accelerating.

This is because regular petroleum diesel is very dirty! It contains lots of soot. At the pump, they usually give you a glove to use to keep your hand clean. Biodiesel cleans the layers of accumulated soot from your tank and fuel lines over time, and the clumps of sooty particles can clog the fuel filter.

My suggestion is buy a fuel filter at the parts store, but DON'T change it yet! No need to waste a fuel filter it if is unnecessary. Keep it in your trunk, along with the wrench/pliers to change it. If the filter clogs, you can change it at your first available opportunity. You might not need to change it for a year or two.

Keep in mind you will notice when it starts to clog when accelerating up a long hill, you won't have the power you usually do. Changing the filter is not an emergency. You won't harm the engine as a diesel is governed by restricting the fuel flow. You can change the day you notice the power loss or wait 5,000 miles and do it then. You will probably just notice it getting a little slower every day.

If it is a pre-1995 diesel, after about 50,000 miles of running biodiesel you might need to replace the fuel lines, because alcohol used in the transesterfication process can detoriate rubber, but don't waste your money doing it right away because it is unnecessary much of the time.

Answer 3

The most important factor to note is that your car must be a diesel to run on Bio Diesel. Other wise you could go for bio ethanol. Now making bio diesel is not an formidable task as such but like any other it requires practice and perfection through practice to give good results Some people do use vegetable oil directly but that requires some engine modification but you can obtain bio diesel from veg oil by transesterification reaction
All about the reaction links to other site videos and other such material regarding Bio Diesel can be found on
http://boilkerala.blogspot.com

Answer 4

Biodiesel takes vegetable oil and modifies it to make it thinner so it'll run in modern diesel cars/trucks. The whole point of biodiesel is to modify the fuel so you don't have to modify the vehicle!

If you want to go the other way 'round, then you spend about $500-2000 on stuff that'll pre-heat the veggie oil. (at room temperature it's a little thick to go through fuel injectors; at freezing, it's way too thick.)

Answer 5

If you have a diesel engine in your car, you already can! Bio-diesel works the same as petroleum based diesel and would require little or no adjustments in your car (Bio-diesel is a solvent and will dissolve residue from petroleum diesel if it was used before, possibly causing clots, but no major problems). Bio-diesel can even be mixed with petroleum based diesel. These blends too have substantial environmental benefits. However vegetable oil fuel is not the same as bio-diesel. Bio-diesel is processed from things like soybeans, while vegetable oil fuel is simply the filtered product after restaurants use the oil for cooking. It is true that this can be also used for fuel in diesel vehicles. The University of Vermont for example fuels all of its buses this way, however to do this your car must be modified. The vegetable oil has a higher firing rate than diesel, one way to solve this is having multiple fuel tanks in your vehicle, starting with regular or bio-diesel and switching to the vegetable oil tank after your vehicle has been warmed up. In unmodified vehicles there is greater evidence of wear and tear when vegetable oil is used. However this oil can be further processed into bio-diesel making it usable for unmodified diesel vehicles.

Answer 6

Start with a modern diesel engine. Nearly any newer diesel engine can be converted to run on vegetable oil as long as it doesn’t have rubber seals in its fuel system (only older diesels use rubber seals). The rubber seals will deteriorate when exposed to vegetable oil over time because vegetable oil acts as a solvent. Step2Install a vegetable oil fuel conversion kit or have a mechanic do it. You should keep the original gas tank to hold regular diesel or biodiesel fuel for cold weather. Install a second tank for vegetable oil; these sometimes go in the trunk. The conversion kit should include hoses from the car's radiator to the vegetable oil tank to heat the oil via a heat exchanger before it enters the final fuel filter and injectors inside the engine compartment. Step3Get vegetable oil. New vegetable oil is easiest to acquire but very expensive. Restaurants will often give you their waste oil for free. Chinese and Japanese restaurants are best because their oils comes out cleanest. The oil should be amber in color. Oil from other types of restaurants may also be suitable but could require more filtering to remove food particles. You will need a few containers for transferring the oil from the source to your filtering destination. The five gallon jugs that the restaurants receive the fresh oil in work fine. Restaurants are usually happy to give you these containers since it saves them disposal fees. Step4Filter the oil. Use filter bags that are rated to 0.5 microns thick. To increase the life of your filter bags, first allow the oil to sit in a barrel for about a week to let particulate matter settle to the bottom. Then, pump or scoop the oil into a filter bag suspended above a fresh empty barrel from the top of the barrel (since most of the food particles matter and possible water is at the bottom). Start your engine using regular diesel or biodiesel fuel from the normal gas tank. Once the engine and vegetable oil are warm (after about 15 minutes depending on weather), switch to allow the vegetable oil to flow into the fuel source. Step5Switch back to diesel or biodiesel a few minutes before you stop your engine for any time (about 10 minutes depending on the temperature) to make sure the vegetable oil is purged from the fuel line and injectors so that they don't become clogged when the engine cools.

Answer 7

If your vehicle is gasoline powered, forget about it. It has to be a diesel engine.

Here is a link to a good discussion about using vegetable oil in a diesel: http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_make.html

Generally, you can expect that manufacturers' warranties will be voided if you use more than 10% veggie oil. Diesel fuel and vegetable oil have different characteristics which make their interchangeability depend on the type of diesel engine, oil temperature and similar factors.

I have read articles by people who have rigged up their VW diesel engines to use vegetable oil. The process typically includes making changes to fuel lines, possibly fuel injectors and switching between regular diesel and vegetable oil -- vegetable oil is thicker than diesel, so it has to be heated to flow through the fuel system. Thus, some systems require you to start using regualr diesel, switch to veggie after the vegetable oil has heated and switch back to diesel before you turn the engine off to purge the fuel lines of veggie. This is an issue particularly in cold climates because vegetable oil thickens and won't flow well. These systems require two fuel tanks, one for diesel and one for vegetable oil.

The last time I looked, vegetable oil cost considerably more than diesel fuel. Also, if you use "used" vegetable oil, it has to be filtered and stored. One owner who stored used vegetable oil discovered that it attracted bears.

Answer 8

It is my understanding that a diesel car can be made to run on biodiesel with little or no modification. They did it on an episode of Mythbuster. It was very cool. I don't know if you can modify a car that runs on regular unleaded gasoline to run on biodiesel. I think it has to have a diesel engine.

Answer 9

Here are the links that Yahoo offers on "biodiesel conversion". Not all cars can be fitted out to run that way, but take a look at the links to see what you can do.

http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=biodiesel+conversion&fr=yfp-t-501&toggle=1&cop=mss&ei=UTF-8

Answer 10

Your car has to be diesel to convert. I live in Berkeley Ca all the city trucks run on bio-diesel, and we have a lot of private cars and trucks running on bio-diesel. Smells like french fries everywhere........