Some great opinions here about a subject which most people know only ‘what they’ve heard’!!
I make bio-diesel for a living and you don’t mix it with methanol, or filter, or refine it. The process it called transeterification (thats, trans - est - eri - fication) which is an ‘exothermic’ chemical reaction (generates heat & is irreversable) this seperates the glycerine from the oil, this settles from the bio diesel as ‘glycerol’.
Ther are various ways to ‘wash’ the diesel following the process but water washing gives the best end result, this must be followed be a drying process to seperate any water residue from the finished product.
HDI Peugeots run just fine on good quality bio, as to many common rail diesels, sorry ‘rob K’ but you don’t have a clue what your talking about, we have a Volvo FH in our yard which has done over 400,000k’s on Bio with no fuel problems what so ever & my boss has an 06 Shogun which has run on our bio all of it’s 50,000 miles. I have had a problem with my MAN 8.163 7.5 ton race transporter, but nothing directly to do with Bio, it turned out to be the fact that MAN coat the inside of their (steel) fuel tanks with a coating of paint which the bio ‘broke down’.
If anyone has any genuine questions about Bio Diesel, ask them here and I will answer them as best I can.
The biggest problem people have with Bio is the differing quality from one manufacturer to another, the secret to good quality is having a reliable and acurate titration test to estblish the exact volume of catalist to achieve a complete reaction.
Let me make a clearer point. By refined i mean purely in terms of removing debris from the collection of UCO. I do not mean in terms of crude oil refinery!
Spacemonkeypg:
Let me make a clearer point. By refined i mean purely in terms of removing debris from the collection of UCO. I do not mean in terms of crude oil refinery!
Sorry, I see what you mean. This is something that would normally be done by the oil suppliers who would normally filter & de-water the oil but these days collecters want a world cruise from each IBC of oil they sell, I was asked for 46ppl this week for ‘as collected’ UCO!!! Add 23 - 25p to make it, 33p duty… so over £1 a litre to make. 3 1/2 yrs ago we could buy processed UCO for £210 a ton (1,100 litres) so as you can see we’re not going on cruises!!
bigr250:
Sorry, I see what you mean. This is something that would normally be done by the oil suppliers who would normally filter & de-water the oil but these days collecters want a world cruise from each IBC of oil they sell, I was asked for 46ppl this week for ‘as collected’ UCO!!! Add 23 - 25p to make it, 33p duty… so over £1 a litre to make. 3 1/2 yrs ago we could buy processed UCO for £21 a ton (1,100 litres) so as you can see we’re not going on cruises!!
Ross.
Hello bir250,
We’re currently getting £530 per ton for processed uco (selling by the tanker load) and we can’t send it away fast enough.
We’ve also been offered £370 per ton for ‘as collected’ material but i’ve dealt with these sort of people before and £370 turns into £280 after they’ve diddled you on the water and ffa content etc.
I totally agree with some previous comments about the quality of Bio-fuel and where it comes from etc. making a difference to vehicle performance.
The trouble with the industry is that there are an awful lot of cowboys who think there’s a fast buck to be made.They buy up all the uco they can get their hands on,make the crudest version of ‘Diesel’ they can and sell it at the highest price they can get away with.
Unfortuanately,all they suceed in doing is ■■■■■■■ up their customers engines and getting the industry a bad name.
I’ve not found anything yet,produced in this country,that i would run a vehicle on but bio-fuel from Germany or Netherlands is superior.
At the moment,Diesel bought on the forecourt contains anywhere between 3% and 8% bio-fuel and there are plans to push this to 10% in the coming years.
Davnic:
We’re currently getting £530 per ton for processed uco (selling by the tanker load) and we can’t send it away fast enough.
We’ve also been offered £370 per ton for ‘as collected’ material but i’ve dealt with these sort of people before and £370 turns into £280 after they’ve diddled you on the water and ffa content etc.
I totally agree with some previous comments about the quality of Bio-fuel and where it comes from etc. making a difference to vehicle performance.
The trouble with the industry is that there are an awful lot of cowboys who think there’s a fast buck to be made.They buy up all the uco they can get their hands on,make the crudest version of ‘Diesel’ they can and sell it at the highest price they can get away with.
Unfortuanately,all they suceed in doing is [zb] up their customers engines and getting the industry a bad name.
I’ve not found anything yet,produced in this country,that i would run a vehicle on but bio-fuel from Germany or Netherlands is superior.
At the moment,Diesel bought on the forecourt contains anywhere between 3% and 8% bio-fuel and there are plans to push this to 10% in the coming years.
Hi Davnic, we used to buy it by the tanker load but (obviously it was £210 not £21!!!) the quality went down & down with more & more hard setting oils blended in as the price increased, now we buy it in IBC’s as at least it’s cold and you get some idea of it’s quality. I’ve heard of suppliers ‘washing’ the oil with various products that play with the titration values and mask the true FFA of the oil, making it look like much better oil than it really is. You mention the “get rich quick” types that invaded the Bio Diesel industry, well I’m sure you will agree the oil collection / processing business is going through the same.
I was due to pick up 4 IBC’s from a local collector, I phoned him to see if it was ready to collect and he said “I’m just processing it now”. I laughed my head off & asked him exactly what process it was he was conducting at that time? He was pumping it from the collection tubs into IBC’s!!! that was his idea of UCO processing
You are100% correct about the quality of the UK industry, when HMRC took a sample of our bio they said “if it doesn’t make 96% on the ester break test we can charge you full fuel duty” they went on to tell us that in practice it it’s over 92% it’ll do. Some weeks later they were back in contact and made no secret of the fact that at 97.2% it was the best quality bio diesel from a small plant they’d ever tested and only a certain government funded multi million £ facility had ever tested higher.
We’ve been having major problems lately with emulsifying agents in the oil, such is the nature of UCO and certain contaminents we cant test for.
Maybe you process it better than some bigr250 but after what I’ve seen going on in the yard I park at I would rather stand the lorry than chance using bio fuel. Incidently the bad batch came from a small plant in the north west, I dunno where though.
bigr250:
You mention the “get rich quick” types that invaded the Bio Diesel industry, well I’m sure you will agree the oil collection / processing business is going through the same.
Ross.
We mostly have trouble with the “I’m going to make my own Diesel so can i have your old oil?” brigade but they’re here today,gone tomorrow.
With the current cold weather,we’ve had several calls from clients we used to collect from (but who had started using a ‘cowboy’ collector) asking us to start calling again because they hadn’t seen ‘cowboy’ for a few weeks.
Turns out ‘cowboy’ didn’t have anything like the right sort of kit and with the cold weather turning the uco to jelly,he couldn’t use it.
This actually does us a favour because once a client comes back to you ‘cap in hand’,knowing you offer a reliable,consistent service,they’re very unlikely to go elsewhere again.
Palm oil and hydrogenated oils certainly pose more of a problem to people like yourself and as you say,buying cold uco in IBC’s is the way to go.
