Bio-Diesel: Farm Grown Profit

At this point before we go along into this fuel concept,, I must stress that veg oil is not the same animal from one oil to another.  I have seen sunflower oil from the same field, grown the same year vary 20% in the needed unleaded gas to make a usable fuel. Soybeans vary the most from the little I have worked with this oil.. Seed brand, and seed number,, soil,, growing conditions all end up with a different oil to make fuel from.

Then you have to test your fuel with any changes in temp. If you mix up a batch of fuel on a 80f day,, and it turns colder the next morning down to 50f,, your in trouble and need to add some more gas.  You always test your fuel for the lowest temps you will be running it with!  Even if you are mixed up with a 50% gas 50% raw oil your lube value is still 16 times better than the newer fuel we have now for injector pump lube.  So always use a splash more gas than you feel you will need.. Its called a safety margin!

So a hydrometer is a must.. Not using one you are risking your engine.!!!!!!!

Please understand that the fuel thickness is important on how well the engine injector can process it to make it into a clean burn. If its too thick it will deposit huge amounts of carbon, and jello in the crankcase.. Sticking rings,, valves, and sealing off the oil pump suction screen..

I got my hydrometer off eBay,, for $25.00  After many people got ahold of the wrong one,, or had to pay $299 for a food grade hydrometer I got on the Internet and found this site which is the lowest priced one I have found. http://www.novatech-usa.com/Products/Specific-Gravity-Hydrometers/6602-4

Its cheap insurance!!

Now for the fellows that want to use used cooking oil..

It works.. but not as good as raw oil.. The heating of the oil over time brakes it down,, and cooks out allot of the hydrogen and oxygen.   So its performance will match #2 diesel at best.

You have to also factor what was cooked in the oil. If it had fish, or meat in it you will also pick up the fats from them.. This adds another wild card to the end result. I do not support the use of used cooking oil but have allot of people taking my concept and running with it.. All are happy with the end results but use a hydrometer and watch out for salt in the cooking oil..

10/31/09

I try to get back and update my site,, but life,, farming,, and old age is starting to carry into my efforts.  Seems what I could get done in a day is now taking me a week.

Fall harvest is beyond slow this year.. We harvest 1 or 2 days and it rains and we sit a week.. Go another day like heck,, and then sit and wate another week for the ground to settle and grain to dry back down.  Most years the combine is parked for the year and this year we are only 1/4 done with fall harvest..

Not knowing from one day to the next what the weather will do and if we can be in the fields ,, my press is just sitting idle.. Sure glad I ran it hard the last of Aug and the first week of Sept.  I still have 800 gallons of sunflower fuel to blend into #2 diesel to finish out this year. 

Getting this late in the season, I generally cut back my mixture to 10% and use it more as a fuel sweetener and added lubrication.  From this point on we could see night time temps getting down into the low 20s..  If I had to or if the #2 diesel was costing $5 a gallon,, you could bet your booties I would be running 100% sunflower fuel!  But it all swings back to time and effort. 

The only good thing about the value of sunflower seeds this year is the markets value is back down in the $0.13 to $0.14 area..  This puts the value of my farmed raised fuel in the $.58 to $.62 per gallon area.  This figure changes daily with the seed market along with the soybean meal market swings.

I did stumble into a industrial centrifuge off eBay last week. Its a shot in the dark,, and hope it plugs in and runs,, but I did get it for 1/10 of what they seem to sell for. At worst,, I feel I got the balanced bowl,, and salvage copper to offset the investment. Having a balanced bowl to start with to make a centrifuge is 90% of the battle.  Should see it next week as its on the truck now from MN.. A centrifuge will offset the weeks of settling oil,, and most of the headaches with cleaning home made fuel.  Using the little DieselCraft centrifuge totally changed the home made fuel effort. I cant remember the last fuel filter I was forced to change out due to dirty fuel. 

That first season,, I was buying case lots of fuel filters.  Never knowing from one batch of fuel to the next if it was good or bad. That was a real pain.. Then once a storage tank got some bad, dirty fuel in it the problem would last for weeks or until one would just empty out the bulk tank and clean it and start all over.

All the people who have shifted over to using centrifuges are seeing a better fuel over all from just settling or using bag filters.  There is something going on inside the centrifuge that seems to condition the fuel and make it another step better.  Some feel is just the added mixing for the fuel by being pumped more times going into the centrifuge.. But I feel the pressure changes the fuel sees going from a bulk tank,, to 100psi,, and back is doing something with the microns of the fuel itself.

The more people work with raw veg oil as fuel using the  (RUG) system,, the more we are learning.. After all, the higher schooled folks keep saying we cant run this fuel.. It has to be chemically modified are still overlooking there mistakes back in the early 1970s of not seeing why raw fuel did not work.

Back in the early 1970s,, about every school of higher learning,, took a new diesel engine,, and poured in pure raw bean oil into the tank and after about 4 hours the engine glued itself together.. There thinking,, its does not work!  No shit.. They never looked back at why it did not work.. Its not the compounds of the raw oils,, it the fuel thickness! A diesel needs the fuel sent into the engine in a mist, or fog.. The finer the better.. Raw oil just went in as a stream, or droplets. Carbon, stuck rings, stuck valves,, jello in the crankcase were the end results along with a dead engine.