Running a car on vegetable oil

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retailwarrior wrote:

Hey silverfoxdude

Snap but I just wang in the iol from the supermarket. There was a clearance the other day of pura, just 20p a ltr!! My car runs better than ever and starts with no problems.

To go back to wigs input. It is worth upping the ratio of deisel in winter as the cold makes the SVO a bit gloopy. But in summer its almost 10-90!

Did you do anything to the car before you use the veg oil or is it just a standard diesel.

tochriss

I do believe that Mercs are pretty tollerent of running on a mix of diesel/veg oil on account of being German and therefore well engineered. Drop dieselveg.com an email, they may well have had feedback from, or maybe be able to put you in touch with folks that have some experience of this.

tochriss

It's imporant to note that if you run your motor on SVO (straight veg oil - rapeseed is best) or WVO (waste veg oil - DO filter it to 1 micron!), HALVE at least the mialage between engine oil changes especially If you have your motor converted and run SVO or WVO neat.

Wig

abomb1969 wrote:

SVO is not a legal road fuel unless you pay full fuel duty on it, only biodiesel which is treated to thin it is legal at the lower duty. You have to prove to HMCE that you are treating your fuel. Other forums might tell you different though so read into it properly.

There was something in the news recently about a biodiesel company fighting customs and excise about what is and isn't biodiesel. I don't know who won. The company was facing an HMCE demand of payment for 1/4million pounds.

HMCE consider biodiesel to be only made by transetrification (whatever that is) the other company was making it by another method. and customs and thieves are trying to disallow their biodiesel because it is made by a different process. Even though it probably meets the customs and thieves (probably self appointed) "standards" of what is biodiesel.

There was a chap on Topgear who was dealing with HMCE declaring his veg oil use, and he did treat his veg oil with a small amount of something (possibly turpentine) So it can be done at minimal cost, but you will need a shed to store all the oil. Plus there's no need to treat the oil except to make customs happy, so as long as you tell them you are, and you have the equipment and know-how to do it and you do it to some of your oil, there's no way in hell that HMCE will actually know if you're putting in treated oil or untreated oil. Just as there's no way they can determine how much you are using.

http://customs.hmrc.gov.uk/channelsPortalWebApp/channelsPortalWebApp.portal?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=pageExcise_ShowContent&id=HMCE_PROD1_024771&propertyType=document

It seems Customs and Thieves have "Interpreted the law" and applied there own standards for what is and isn't biodiesel. I suspect the guy on top gear is probably now paying 47p litre duty*, it would be interesting for topgear to revisit him and see what he is doing.

*Because if you declare yourself a maker of biodiesel you have to be able to prove to the thieves that it meets their standards, I don't know how difficult this will be to do.

What this all comes down to is big business pressuring the government to stop the little man from being able to take advantage of the biodiesel duty rate. They want all the cake for themselves.

From what I can gather, the little man is restricted now (practically) to using SVO or WVO and to pay duty @ 47p per litre. Which means the only practical thing to do is get waste oil free, and filter it in your shed.

cornerclose

I've only just seen this thread and there's one thing that bothers me. No emissions? Without being too technical (I'm a chemist by education), when you burn any sort of oil you get water and ...CO2. Sorry to put a dampener on the green bit, folks!

Wig

WHat they mean is no net carbon increase to the planet, if I'm not mistaken.

Fossil fuels locked up in the ground will remain there for eternity if we didn't bring them up and burn them into the atmosphere. So there is a kind of increase here which would otherwise not have happened.

Bio diesel is first made by the plant, it takes it's components out of the earth/air/water and then by burning we release those elements back to the earth/air/water, thus no net increase.

cornerclose

Yes, point taken, thanks.

redux

Wig wrote:

What this all comes down to is big business pressuring the government to stop the little man from being able to take advantage of the biodiesel duty rate. They want all the cake for themselves.

Interesting comment indeed

A while ago, I read canvassing by a producer of biofuels for duty reduction on its 5% blended product, and less or no relief on home-made 100% stuff, which it wants to restrict with bureaucratic obstacles.

Greenergy not living up to its name I think

http://www.greenergy.com/company/downloads/Submission_2004_Budget.pdf

read pages 4 and 5

Greenergy believes that the best way to develop a successful biodiesel market is to promote the use of biodiesel blends ahead of pure biodiesel. Accordingly Greenergy believes that the Government should incentivise biodiesel blends through duty suspended installations, over and above the existing duty incentive for pure biodiesel, for the reasons detailed below.

and on p 7

Greenergy recommends that pure unblended biodiesel should continue to be eligible for the current 20 pence per litre duty incentive relative to ULSD, whilst blends through duty suspended installations should qualify for a higher incentive (see section 1.7).

... and they had already whinged earlier about the alleged low quality of other products damaging the market's opinion of biodiesel before they could invest in it themselves

Yet small biodiesel producers are proliferating, and their prices are competitive, so Greenergy concludes that they must be cutting corners and costs by supplying untested product. Greenergy stresses that quality cannot be left to market forces because consumers (both retail and commercial) are not in a position to determine quality themselves prior to purchase.

This situation is leading not just to unfair competition but - more importantly - to material reputational risk fears for the larger reputable suppliers that operate the retail forecourt networks, essential to the creation of a successful UK biodiesel market. These players cannot risk their brands being “tarred with the same brush” as the smaller players should a quality crisis prevail.

As the biodiesel market expands within the current duty regime, negative press reports about biodiesel can eventually be expected, and biodiesel will increasingly be seen by consumers as a risky and inferior product compared to ordinary diesel, rather than the environmentally superior product that it should be. Once this happens it will be difficult to mobilise a successful biodiesel market in the UK without larger fiscal incentives than might otherwise have been the case if the fiscal framework had encouraged quality biodiesel from day one.

Overall, the company demonstrates a very strange view of market forces, that they can only compete without a level playing field.

rogerbanana

what a discusssion i have created!

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all i can say is that my vw touran has been in for a service and nowt was said about the veg. oil in the tank and filters etc.
i did run an old ford van on unfiltered second-hand veg. oil for six months without any probs. until the mot and the filters were the worst the mechanic had seen, but the engine was running superbly.

chris73

WoW! - just check out these prices of Biodiesel Here

at £1.44 a litre, I can see why sales are not going so well