running of straight vegi oil

[gregor]

I was watching mythbusters yesterday and they did a test running on straight vegi-oil. They didn't do anything but run it through a filter first. The only difference that they saw was on vegi-oil they were getting 3 miles less per gallon. As far as they could tell they said that it would cause no damage to the engine. I was wondering if anyone has tried this.

[01powersmoker]

you have to heat it when its cooler

[Marty]

Most systems I've seen start out on regular diesel and then you switch over to vegi. I also believe it has to be heated up to like 150 or 180 degree's. I suppose that has to do with the viscosity.

I'm sure Vegi-Destroyer or Clay will chime in here for ya.

[Patrick]

I wouldnt call Mythbuster's diesel experts. Maintain is right. You should start it on diesel first.

30 gallons of diesel @ $2.50 a gallon costs $75.00
@ 15 mpg that turns into 450 miles.

30 gallons of Vegi @ $0.00 a gallon....who cares about mpg.

After you save enough money to pay for the new vegi oil fuel system....start saving money to cover your warranty you just lost.

Sorry clay...I still love you man!


PAtrick

[01powersmoker]

theres info on the net its sometimes called s.v.o. straight vegetable oil.

[Badfish740]

Anybody who is interested in either biodiesel or SVO NEEDS to check out these forums first:

Biodiesel & SVO Forums - Powered by eve community

This site is probably the single most comprehensive source of real world do it yourself info out there. I've been researching it for a long time and actually found a source of biodiesel that I can purchase at cost, but I may still go with SVO someday. Here's a few basic points that you can learn more about on the infopop forums.

First and foremost, straight vegetable oil and biodiesel are NOT the same. Think of straight vegetable oil (SVO) as "crude oil" and biodiesel as "#2 diesel" Biodiesel is SVO that's been "refined," but not refined as in cracked, like petroluem products. Biodiesel is made by reacting SVO with sodium methoxide (a mixture of lye and methanol) in order to remove the glycerin from the oil and make it thinner (it's not that simple, but I'm not a chemist!) so that it can be used just as regular diesel fuel with no modifications (heating systems, etc...) to the vehicle. With biodiesel you pump it in just like regular diesel, add some fuel conditioner as you normally would, and go. Some vehicles seem to tolerate biodiesel better than others. From what I've seen the 6.0L doesn't seem to tolerate it well, but the 7.3L seems to be able to handle mixtures of 75% (B75) to 100% (B100) bio just fine (the other 25% being regular diesel), so blending in small amounts to begin with is recommended.

SVO on the other hand requires modifications to the vehicle which basically entail a seperate tank/pump/filtration/delivery system for the SVO, and a method of heating it to operating temperature. The heating is usually accomplished by using waste heat from engine coolant and 12V heating devices. You can't run SVO without A: filtering it to at least 5 microns, B: ensuring that there is absolutely NO suspended or free water in it, and C: heating it to at least 120 degrees F so that it is sufficiently thinned. If you fail to take one or more of these steps, at the very least your fuel filters will become plugged, and at the worst you'll destroy your injection pump.

SVO at normal temperatures (say 72 degrees) is just too thick to be handled by an injection pump. At that temp SVO has about 30 times the viscosity of #2 diesel. If the oil has water suspended in it (all used fryer oil has a lot, all new oil has a little) the water will be rapidly turned to steam when it enters the injection pump. Once this happens the mini steam explosions will cause pitting on the various metal surfaces inside the pump. Finally, just like with fuel, filtration is important, most anyone who uses SVO filters to 5 microns (if not smaller) before the fuel hits the IP.

I don't mean to discourage anyone, just wanted to spread a little knowledge. If you don't want to get your hands (or your garage) dirty either collecting and filtering SVO or making biodiesel you can find a co-op in your area that makes biodiesel. Usually you can get fuel at or just a little above cost, which, from a good producer, should be around $1.00 a gallon give or take.

I plan on buying about 50 gallons at a time and having the producer fill a 55 gallon drum in the back of my truck. Then I'll transfer the contents of the drum through a 2 micron filter (they filter to 5 micron) into a 250 gallon home heating oil tank behind my shed where I can pump from at will into my truck. I'll probably add diesel to the mix to end up with roughly B75 with some Power Service just to be safe in the winter months.

[Clay Henry]

Originally Posted by Badfish740

Anybody who is interested in either biodiesel or SVO NEEDS to check out these forums first:

Biodiesel & SVO Forums - Powered by eve community

This site is probably the single most comprehensive source of real world do it yourself info out there. I've been researching it for a long time and actually found a source of biodiesel that I can purchase at cost, but I may still go with SVO someday. Here's a few basic points that you can learn more about on the infopop forums.

First and foremost, straight vegetable oil and biodiesel are NOT the same. Think of straight vegetable oil (SVO) as "crude oil" and biodiesel as "#2 diesel" Biodiesel is SVO that's been "refined," but not refined as in cracked, like petroluem products. Biodiesel is made by reacting SVO with sodium methoxide (a mixture of lye and methanol) in order to remove the glycerin from the oil and make it thinner (it's not that simple, but I'm not a chemist!) so that it can be used just as regular diesel fuel with no modifications (heating systems, etc...) to the vehicle. With biodiesel you pump it in just like regular diesel, add some fuel conditioner as you normally would, and go. Some vehicles seem to tolerate biodiesel better than others. From what I've seen the 6.0L doesn't seem to tolerate it well, but the 7.3L seems to be able to handle mixtures of 75% (B75) to 100% (B100) bio just fine (the other 25% being regular diesel), so blending in small amounts to begin with is recommended.

SVO on the other hand requires modifications to the vehicle which basically entail a seperate tank/pump/filtration/delivery system for the SVO, and a method of heating it to operating temperature. The heating is usually accomplished by using waste heat from engine coolant and 12V heating devices. You can't run SVO without A: filtering it to at least 5 microns, B: ensuring that there is absolutely NO suspended or free water in it, and C: heating it to at least 120 degrees F so that it is sufficiently thinned. If you fail to take one or more of these steps, at the very least your fuel filters will become plugged, and at the worst you'll destroy your injection pump.

SVO at normal temperatures (say 72 degrees) is just too thick to be handled by an injection pump. At that temp SVO has about 30 times the viscosity of #2 diesel. If the oil has water suspended in it (all used fryer oil has a lot, all new oil has a little) the water will be rapidly turned to steam when it enters the injection pump. Once this happens the mini steam explosions will cause pitting on the various metal surfaces inside the pump. Finally, just like with fuel, filtration is important, most anyone who uses SVO filters to 5 microns (if not smaller) before the fuel hits the IP.

I don't know where you got your information but there is really alot of misinformation in it. If you would like me to address it, i will otherwise I'll leave it alone.

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Last edited by Clay Henry : 01-09-2007 at 06:45 AM.

[Clay Henry]

Originally Posted by DiscountPowerParts

I wouldnt call Mythbuster's diesel experts. Maintain is right. You should start it on diesel first.

30 gallons of diesel @ $2.50 a gallon costs $75.00
@ 15 mpg that turns into 450 miles.

30 gallons of Vegi @ $0.00 a gallon....who cares about mpg.

After you save enough money to pay for the new vegi oil fuel system....start saving money to cover your warranty you just lost.

Sorry clay...I still love you man!


PAtrick

Pat, your such a pima....lol
No really, it can be done without the dealer knowing your doing it and thus voiding your warranty...just like any mod to your truck, if you can hide it from the dealer, you will be ok...i just didn't hide mine well enough...actually i thought i had all the bases covered but some wierd circumstances that day at the dealer proved to be a bad deal for my warranty.

[Clay Henry]

Originally Posted by gregor

I was watching mythbusters yesterday and they did a test running on straight vegi-oil. They didn't do anything but run it through a filter first. The only difference that they saw was on vegi-oil they were getting 3 miles less per gallon. As far as they could tell they said that it would cause no damage to the engine. I was wondering if anyone has tried this.

You can not run any diesel engine on vegi oil poured straight into the stock tank...it has to be heated to a minimum of 160* f to bring the viscosity down AND allow it to properely atomize in the combustion chanmer...otherwise you get incomplete combustion which leads to coking and engine failure.
If Mythbusters did this and said it was okay, they are idiots. Research has proven what happens when cold VO is used this way. Ford did the same thing once and used cold VO in the main tank...advertising that this was the new fuel for diesel engines and since then, they trashed a new 6.0 engine and swept all that under the rug and now are saying it can not be done.
The 3 mpg less milage is true. I get about 19 on diesel and 16 on vegi oil. But its free so who cares.
I have 12k miles running vegi in my PSD so far.

[Badfish740]

Originally Posted by CHenry

I don't know where you got your information but there is really alot of misinformation in it. If you would like me to address it, i will otherwise I'll leave it alone.

I would like you to actually. As I said, I've only done the research, I haven't actually done it myself. Pretty much all of my information comes from the infopop forums/frybrid.com, which are both pretty highly regarded, so if anything is incorrect, its likely because of my misinterpretation of the information.

I'd really like to hear from someone who has a lot of experience running on SVO, so feel free to pick my explanation apart.