There is a lot of information about vegetable oil and how it is made, its use from the time it is processed to the time it is considered as a waste product. Usually the point it becomes a waste product is when it leaves the fryer. But is that the end of its serviceable life some say no there is an increasing interest to use this waste oil as fuel, biodiesel and biofuel.
How is waste vegetable oil or (WVO) made into fuel? First of all, this needs to be done at room temperature at about 70 degrees Farenheit – add some sodium hydroxide (lye), methanol (heet), and vegetable oil. You add these three ingredients together in the correct quantities and mix them until they are completely blended . At this point you let the mixture settle it will separate into layers the bottom layer will be glycerin and the top layer will be Biodiesel .
The process above was with clean oil but what about the oils and grease from fryers grills etc. what to do when you have old oil that isn’t very clean ? There are many ways to do the oil processing; bag filters are the easiest, cheapest and slowest processing tool that you have other than straight settling to process WVO. Oil will run through a 100 micron filter bag at 2-5 gallons per minute however, if the oil is dirty or just creamy the flow rate will deteriorate rapidly . Pre-heating oil helps as does larger/longer filter bags. You can use filter bags after settling .
Cartridge WVO filters, tee strainers ECT, should be used only with heated oil or heating of the filter. Waxy precipitates in cool oil quickly clog cartridge filters and no amount of pressure will resolve this issue. Reserve cartridge filters for final polishing/filtering at transfer into the vehicle or very low volume/emergency use. Any mechanical cartridge filter will require an amount of pressure to work, finding an appropriate pump, plumbing and pressure relief system can be difficult and large spills are possible.
Another way is to use what I call “Forced Settling” WVO centrifuges can clean WVO to sub micron levels as well as removing heavier liquid contaminants such as water. If you are looking at having to deal with hundreds of gallons or more, a centrifuge is your only solution.
You probably don’t stop to think about it, but all fuels have a shelf life that depends on their chemical composition and storage conditions. The chemical stability of biodiesel depends on the oil from which it was derived. Biodiesel from oils that naturally contain the antioxidant tocopherol or vitamin E (e.g., rapeseed oil) remain usable longer than biodiesel from other types of vegetable oils. Stability is noticeably diminished after 10 days and the fuel may be unusable after 2 months. Temperature also affects fuel stability in that excessive temperatures may denature the fuel.
We all know that Waste Vegetable Oil can be converted to Biodiesel. To get the total understanding of what a biodiesel is, this refers to a non-petroleum-based diesel fuel that consist of short chain alkyl esters (methyl or ethyl) through the process of transesterification of the vegetable oil or animal fat which can either be used alone or blended together with conventional petrodiesel in unmodified diesel engines.
Biodiesel is distinguished from the straight vegetable oil (SVO) used as fuels in some converted diesel engines.
How biodiesel was discovered and where… goes back to 1937 in Belgium. It was discovered by G. When Chavanne of the University of Brussels were performing the Procedure for the trasnforamtion of vegetable oil for their uses as fuels.
There are many uses for biodiesel. It can either be used in its pure form or can be blended with petroleum diesel as what we have stated above, at any concentration in most modern diesel engines. Biodiesel has different solvent properties than petrodiesel and will degrade natural rubber gaskets and hoses in vehicles (mostly the ones manufactured before 1992). One thing about biodiesel is that it has been known to break down deposits of residue in the fuel lines where petrodiesel has been used.
Biodiesel is distributed globally. Sources of these biofuels are everywhere! They can be found in your own homes, local markets, restaruants and in major food manufacturers. Waste Vegetable oil is the way to go for a healthy and clean living; as well as being cost-effective it really is the best alternative fuel.
There are a lot of resources there concerning WVO. Be part of raising awareness to the uses of waste vegetable oil. For more information on Waste Vegetable Oil and how to convert them into biofuel, you can visit www.wvodesigns.com. Think about the future and think about the next generation. The success of the future depends on how well man takes care of his environment. Earth matters no matter what.
It is known throughout that diesel engines were originally designed to run on vegetable oil and to the mechanical and technical person, the diesel engine was invented by Rudolf Diesel. He was the one who came up with the idea of combusting engine using a vegetable oil. In the modern times, not all engines are equipped to use vegetable oil as fuel without some additional processing or conversions.
To be able for any ordinary diesel engine to accept vegetable oil, WVO centrifuges and filters were created to help in the conversion process. To convert the vegetable oil into a biofuel, one has to simply heat the vegetable oil in the tank or fuel lines before it is injected directly to the engine. An extra tank is needed for this process, a heater system for heating it and a filter to avoid clogging. Filtration can take weeks, but there is another way to maximize the filtration process, and that is by the use of WVO centrifuges.
A common way to do it is to start your engine using the petroleum-based diesel fuel for a certain time until the vegetable heats up. Getting the right temperature will automatically get the engine to switch to the vegetable oil as fuel. Once the car is switched off, the engine will switch back to the standard diesel to clear the fuel lines of vegetable oil preparing for the next time it is going to be used.
Climate is an obstacle to using vegetable oil, so it is best to heat the vegetable oil properly as it may harden. The key to this is to have the vegetable oil in liquefied form to flow smoothly in the fuel lines.
Of course there are other ways of running your car using vegetable oil. Best to have your engine converted into a vegetable oil ready. It may cost some money, but the cost of conversion is far outweighed by what you can save using vegetable oil.
So where can you get vegetable oil? Easy, you can get them from your own kitchen or in restaurants and food manufacturers. All you need is a good filtration equipment and voila! You are ready to go!
Vegetable Oils can be made into Biofuel. First let us define biofuel. Biofuel is comparable to the petroleum-based diesel fuel, it is organic as it is derived from vegetable oil. This is an alternative fuel that came from 100% renewable organic resources.
So what is vegetable oil? It is simply the oil produced or extracted from plants and has similar fuel composition to that of the diesel fuel. Examples are the oil from coconut, peanut, palm, corn, rapeseed, babassu, artichoke, sunflower, soy bean, hemp, perilla, honge (found in India), ben (seeds of the Moringa Oleifera), and many others.
Biofuel can be made from Waste Vegetable Oil (WVO), which is a used vegetable oil, where one can get in restaurants and food manufacturers. Restaurants and Food Manufacturers get rid of their used vegetable oil. That’s why biofuel is very cheap and anyone can convert the WVO at home provided you have the equipment to convert it; but if not, you can get it from anywhere. One such outfit where you can get a WVO centrifuge (replacement for WVO Filters – which can take weeks in filtering the used oil) is www.WVOdesigns.com. What WVO centrifuge can do is converting the used oil to biofuel. This is a replacement of WVO filters. The filtering process of WVO can take several weeks, but through the centrifuge, it will actually maximize the time in filtering the used oil. There are different designs and sizes and WVODesigns.com have one that is very handy.
There are a lot more articles about biofuel and WVO in WVOdesigns.com. It’s a very informative site. This is to raise awareness that we all have to be responsible to our environment. If we are not careful in what we do, it will always come back to us. Our environment reflects on what we do with it. Biofuel is not only good for the environment, but it can be the answer to the rising economic crisis especially with the fuel crisis. So, think about it. You are not only saving the environment, you are also saving yourself money on the fuel.
Every day, there are a millions of restaurants around the world disposing of their used cooking oil. This waste material known as WVO (Waste Vegetable Oil) or even SVO (Strait Vegetable Oil) can be used as a bio-fuel for diesel engines. Why diesel engines? Because diesel oil is very similar to cooking grease and a diesel engine can easily be converted or upgraded so that it can accept bio-fuels as an affordable alternative. You do not have to be a mechanical expert to find this interesting.
What do you need to know before you run WVO as fuel? To ensure engine life research has shown that the engine needs to be hot and the oil needs to be pre-heated.This requires an additional fuel system installed on the vehicle for WVO. There are many small companies that can sell you with a “WVO Conversion” but you should do some reasearch before selecting your partner. There are thousands of people doing it in many countries around the world and since emission testing has showed a significant reduction in exhaust emissions vs standard diesel fuel, this is a good thing.
Aside from the conversion of the vehicle the WVO must be processed to clean it first before it can be used in an engine. This can be done by settling for weeks or even months or by using a WVO Centrifuge to get the job done quickly without the use of filters.
Waste Vegetable Oils are not the only source of waste-to-energy type of fuels that can be used in diesel engines.WMO (Waste Motor Oil) and even automatic transmission fluid are also potential fuel sources and could also be processed in a WVO Centrifuge.
As time goes on we must continue in the quest to help conserve energy, maximize productivity, and be cost-effective. With the economic state of the world right now, people are looking for ways to economize. Put your life into perspective, go green, go recycling and go WVO!
We often heard about biofuels, but do you know what it is? Do you know the importance of it in our environment as well as our economy today? How long has man started looking into biofuels?
Man had started studying the alternative fuel for as early as the 19th century. So what is biofuel? The term “biofuel” applies to any form of matter produced from organic (once-living) matter. It is produced or derived from renewable sources like corn, soy, etc…
Now, what are the benefits of using biofuels, you say? This is actually the best way of reducing the smoke emitted from the greenhouse gas build-up that causes the greenhouse effect. This is also considered or can be looked upon as an alternative to fossil fuels that are now limited in resources. The uses of biofuel has grown or exapnded throughout. The primary or most common biofuels are ethanol and biodiesel.
Here, we will focus on biodiesel. What it is, is an all-natural and renewable alternative fuel for diesel engines made from vegetable oils, mostly soy and corn. It contains no petroleum and is actually nontoxic and biodegradable. One particular example under biodiesel that we are going to discuss on is the Waste Vegetable Oil (WVO). How a Waste Vegetable Oil can be used as an alternative fuel is another achievement attained by man’s quest for advancement. As technology evolves, so does man’s needs and the rapid growth in the population drove us to find other ways to maximize our resources; thus man discovered ways in making WVO as biofuel.
How does engines that are designed to burn diesel fuel work using biofuels? It is done by lowering the viscosity of the vegetable oil to allow it for proper atomization. Its conversion is a long process, and takes several weeks to convert it to where it can be used as a biodiesel for car engines; but there is a better way to minimize conversion time, by using WVO centrifuge. The WVO centrifuge is not new, but if adjusted right with precision, it actually performs better than any WVO filters.
So where can we find these waste vegetable oils? Hard to believe, but it can be found right in your own kitchen! Large suppliers of Waste Vegetable Oils are restaurant outfits. They convert this Waste Vegetable Oil this into a biofuel by simply adding methanol and lye and presto! Instant biofuel!
So, why go for alternative fuel? To save on costs and keep the environment, clean for our next generation.
If we convert organic matter into fuel, we can produce what we may call as Biofuels that can be use for powering our society. These are just a method of lowering our long-term dependence on the dwindling supply of fossil fuels. There are a number of derivatives of biofuels that are used frequently with ethanol being the most commonly used but the is also sugar can and the oil from both vegetables and corn. Although often used as an alternative for gasoline, ethanol doe have other uses. As of today, only two percent of the world’s usable gasoline is consisted of ethanol but according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), by 2025, it would rise up to 10 percent and up to 30 percent by 2050.
There is still a long way to go in making these biofuels economically viable according to research carried out by Oregon State University. We have yet to develop bio-fuels that are as energy efficient as gasoline made from petroleum. We measure the efficiency of any energy by how much we obtain from it in relation to how much was used to create it. Despite our best efforts, fuel sources always require a greater input than they are able to supply back. While it is true that the end product energy is what’s more valuable for our needs and that the input energy is just the effort it takes to produce the end-product, taking into consideration that what truly matters is the conversion, is important. To illustrate this the energy efficiency of ethanol is only twenty percent, biodiesel is sixty nine percent whereas gasoline is seventy five percent. Although these studies did provide proof of something very interesting: Ethanol derived from Cellulose is 85% efficient which as actually higher than nuclear energy.
Stock exchanges everywhere are looking to invest in these areas as the profitability of biofuels starts to be felt. Indeed, it is predicted by a consensus of analysts that these fuels will be supplying seven percent of the entire world’s transportation fuels by the year 2030. One certain energy markets analyst has said, growth in demand for diesel and gasoline may slow down dramatically, if the government subsidizes firms distributing biofuels and further pushes to promote the use of eco-friendly fuel. Read this information about how diesel vs gas vehicles compare. Need some tips for saving gas? So how do you compare gas cars vs. diesel cars?
Take Brazil for example: they have become the foremost producer worldwide of ethanol’s made from sugar. It produces approximately three and a half billion gallons of ethanol per year. Next to Brazil, the United States, which is the world’s greatest oil-guzzler, is now one of the largest producer of bio fuels. This figure far exceeds the amount produced by the European Union annually with just four million tonnes. Now eighty percent of Europe’s biodiesel comes from rapeseed oil with the remaining twenty percent from soybean and a little from palm oil.