Alternative Fuels & Better Fuel Mileage

[Terrainist]

Hoping this thread takes off. It's looming on the horizon.. expensive fuel.

So, what can we burn and how can we do it. Diesel and gasoline, there are alternatives for both. Any links, anything you've done, anything you've heard, anything remotely relevant.

I'm going to seriously look into brewing some biodiesel for my truck and look into alcohol for the gasoline engine. I've heard that distilling alcohol for a fuel can be finicky, but can be done. And it doesn't have to be done with corn. 1 acre of cattails has enough starch in it to make 100,000 gallons of fuel, or so I've heard.

Here's a biodiesel link posted in another thread. http://biodiesel.infopop.cc/6/ubb.x?a=cfrm&s=447609751

Anyone on these forms brewing their own biodiesel?

Edit: going to include getting better fuel mileage in this discussion. Aerodynamics for better fuel mileage, the mythical gasoline evaporator, etc.

 

[saveitforsunrise]

if its for sure you can make atleast 10k of fuel with cattails ill be converting over to diesel as soon as possible

 

[Metcalf]

I dabble in alternative fuels. That was my focus in engineering at college, go figure I work for a company that deals mainly with oil and natural gas!

Anyways....

My most current research ( yes, I do research for fun. ) has been into the pyrolysis of vegetable oil to make bio-fuel. Basically, you can make vegetable oil into a diesel motor fuel without any chemicals or alcohols.

I replicated some research from Purdue in cold-weather bio-diesel. You can basically separate the saturated and unsaturated molecules leaving you the ability to have bio-diesel that works down to -60F or so. I have a few posts about this in another part of this board, just search by author.

One other project I have been working on is designing a small scale Fisher-Tropsch reactor that uses bio-mass for 'fuel'. This would allow you to stick woody biomass in one end and get synthetic diesel fuel out the other :drool:

Bio-diesel is fairly easy to make....and fairly hard to make well. 2007+ diesels with DPF systems do not generally like bio-diesel.

Ethanol is hard to get dry enough to blend it with gasoline. If you want to run ethanol only, some water can be tolerated. Look at Jerusalem Artichokes for ethanol fuel stock. Good yield, easy to harvest ( at the right time ), and they grow like weeds in even the most marginal soils.

 

[obscurotron]

You'll need to build your motor for ethanol. Pretty much anything that's not an E85 rated engine right now won't tolerate much more than an E15 blend.

Google it, there are some decent studies using real-world sample vehicles running E20 (newest proposal to jump from E10 to E20). Valve problems, compression problems, some emissions issues.

It can be done, but you're not going to want to do it on a motor you expect a decent life of.

 

[PirateMcGee]

I also dabble in biofuels for school (I'm almost done with a mixed degree in mechanical engineering, renewable energy engineering, and environmental science with an emphasis on sustainable technology) and I also do a little bit of work in renewable energy.

biodiesel is pretty rad stuff, in fact, i love the stuff and have done quite a bit of research on the topic. For fun you can make biodiesel in a 2 liter jug at home. I agree with the pyrolysis to make biodiesel it is cool stuff. There is also a e-coli strain that has been found that can convert glycerin into ethanol.


I have also made ethanol from scratch using a small (55 gallon @ a time) scale ethanol plant that we've built at my school. Water is very hard to get rid off but distilling multiple times can get rid of most of it. The issue with ethanol is it takes a lot of energy to produce to the point where it takes about the same amount of energy to produce as it yields.

IMHO I think electric will be the way we end up going. I really like some of these newer cars i.e. volt that use a small gas engine to charge run the motor once out of battery power. Now if they would only use a small diesel engine instead that is capable of running on bio or straight wvo we would be golden as long as we revamped our electric grid and focused way more on renewables at the grid scale.

 

[Terrainist]

Here is a thread on how to brew biodiesel from these forums, supposedly. I couldn't make heads or tails of it. A lot to learn evidently. http://www.expeditionportal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=35693&highlight=biodiesel

 

[Terrainist]

Since one of the problems with running biodiesel is that is doesn't like cold temps, would it be possible to run the fuel line so that it wraps around the radiator hose 15 times or so to heat it?

I live in the desert of AZ, so hypothetically, I can run 100% biodiesel in the summer. In the winter its iffy. But if a person were to have two tanks, one with the biodiesel, one with regular diesel, start it and run it up to temp on the regular diesel then switch to the bio tank, I'm thinking it would get heated enough with the fuel line wrapped around the radiator hose sufficiently.

Regular diesel fuel is more efficient as well when it is heated it's my understanding. Lots to learn. I'm going to look into building a biodiesel plant.

 

[marshal]

i run E85 when its economically viable for me, i have no problems with it. i wish they'd stop making it out of corn and start making it out of sugar cane. its a lot better product.

 

[Terrainist]

The 200 mpg carburetor http://newcarbuyingguide.com/index.php/news/main/4145/event=view

 

[Darwin]

I just finished this svo conversion in my 95 Cummins. works great.

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Before the Dodge I had a 92 ford that I converted. Drove it all the way down to central mexico and back last winter.

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[Terrainist]

Darwin - got any more details? Did you buy a kit? I have a '93 Dodge diesel I'd like to get running on something else. Thx.

 

[Darwin]

No, I didn't buy a kit. They are all way overpriced and of poor quality. I built it myself but borrowed a plumbing diagram from someone. Your 93 dodge would be a great truck to convert. If you could upgrade the fuel pump to the piston style of the 2nd gen you would be even better off. Send me a PM if you want more details.

 

[Terrainist]

Great, thanks.

 

[IdaSHO]

If I didnt operate my diesel truck in the winter so much, I would be all over biodiesel.

It is simply too much hassle when the temps drop though.

Diesel barely wants to flow in the temps we see every year. :Wow1:

 

[Metcalf]

There is a process to make cold weather biodiesel that is called Permaflow.