wvo viscosity vs. diesel

[farmboyhull]

all of us good doobies seem to understand that it is important to heat our veggie to 160/180 before it hits the ip, which has gotten me to thinking. the reason for the heat is to get the veggie thin enough to spray efficiently, right? to imitate diesel? i'm wondering about adding a bit of veggie to my diesel tank, and recalling chris's statement about mixing white paint and black paint, i'm wondering just how bad it might be. our diesel fuel gets mighty cold in the winter, and i wonder how that affects the viscosity and spray pattern. there may be a chance of hurting my car by adding a tablespoon of veggie oil, but probably not. what about ten percent? what about 50 percent? i'd love to hear some thoughts and facts about the dangers of adding any veggie to straight diesel.

thanks

david

[J.T.]

What's the point? I don't understand why you would want to mix VO into your diesel tank, unless maybe in an effort to raise the lubricity of the diesel but a commercial additive would be less trouble and probably more effective.

However, personal questions aside, I have a couple bits of fact pertaining to the subject that may help.

Last November when I started researching VO usage, began to collect and filter oil, and bought my Merc I combined WVO and Diesel with a 50/50 concentration in a mayo jar to experiment with. My immediate findings were that the two substances mixed very thoroughly without agitation and appeared to be quite thin, I also placed the jar in my freezer to test for gelling with no evidence at 15deg. F. It's now been 9 months since my experiment and the mixture is still in a jar on top of my refrigerator (yea I'm a bachelor), the two substances have not separated at all.

I don't care to speculate on potential dangers of burning a mix of VO and diesel but I ran a 50/50 mix in my car for a few tanks with no noticeable problems other than clogging filters because the VO cleaned my tank.

picture of 9 month old mix...

[akghound]

Check out this thread at infopop;
http://biodiesel.infopop.cc/groupee/...001#8981007001
Ken Gardner

[asnowsquall]

I'm either tired or dumb, but I need more of a description on that picture.

[J.T.]

That is a picture taken at time of posting of the 50/50 vo/diesel that I mixed 9 months ago. I guess the picture doesn't really show anything except lack of seperation. I seem to recall some posts where the topic was vo/diesle mixtures seperating over time, or small amounts of VO being returned to your diesel tank being a bad thing because it might settle to the bottom resulting in the injection of low temp high concentration VO while starting on diesel. This jar has proven to me at lease that vo and diesel will not seperate naturally.

Take it for what it's worth.

[J.T.]

Originally Posted by akghound

Check out this thread at infopop;
http://biodiesel.infopop.cc/groupee/...001#8981007001
Ken Gardner

By looking at those pictures I'd say that his problem was not caused simply by vo and diesel being mixed, there has to be other factors involved. Two of which appear to be dirt and water. But who knows, this is why I won't tell someone that it's alright to mix, I don't know. All I do know is that my mixture hasn't spawned any weird stuff inert or otherwise. However it has been at room temp for all this time, maybe I'll toss it oustide for another nine months and see how it looks after autumn, winter, spring and summer have applied their magic.

[farmboyhull]

the point of mixing for me would be saving some money, gaining potential benefits from the veggie lube, and using less petroleum.

the biodiesel thread didn't show me much either.

i have a frybrid kit patiently waiting to be put on my sedan, but until it goes on, and we have this nice heat, i wondered about elgitimate dangers to mixing. are there hard facts out there about viscosity? it seems to me if the temp needs to be 180 for pure veggie, it would be less for 50% veggie. i'm wondering if there is an amount of veggie that can be added to the tank which would have no ill effects on my car.

david

[cgoodwin]

We are not talking about nuts and bolts here but chemistry. VO is a triglyceride



Breaking it into monoglycerides leaves glycerine and you have bio-diesel, while the process is done with potassium hydroxide I do not know what the reaction would be from diesel and therefore it is difficult to determine what you would be dealing with or the effects of heat on the mixtures viscosity.

Read:
http://www.turbodieselregister.com/m...and_diesel.htm

And this:

Engelman et al. (1978) presented data for 10% to 50% soybean oil fuel blends[1] used in diesel engines. The initial results were encouraging. They reported at the conclusion of a 50-hour test that carbon build-up in the combustion chamber was minimal. For the fuel blends studied, it was generally observed that vegetable oils could be used as a fuel source in low concentrations. The BSFC and power measurements for the fuel blends only differed slightly from 100% diesel fuel. Fuel blends containing 60% or higher concentrations of vegetable oil caused the engine to sputter. Engine sputtering was attributed to fuel filter plugging. They concluded that waste soybean oil could be used as a diesel fuel extender with no engine modifications.


[1]Vegetable oil fuel blends of varying percentages refer to fuels of which raw vegetable oils have been mixed at the indicated percentage with #2 diesel on a volume basis.

From the following papers, all on the R&D page of frybrid:

http://www.uidaho.edu/bae/biodiesel/...e%20review.doc

Chris

[Bill()C]

Been using about a 7% mixture when it's warm with no obvious affects on performance etc. I do it because... well it's 7% less dino diesel I use.

Bill

[farmboyhull]

thanks for the links. i also looked at the viscosity chart in the reference forum, and was shocked to see just how close cold and hot diesel were. i thought there would be a larger difference.
it appears that adding a little veggie, especially in this weather, isn't gonna hurt all that much, and may help with lubing me up a little more. looks like 10 to 15% may be the magic nnumber. of course, if i could carve out some time, i could just install the kit...

thanks for the help.

david