Cold weather biodiesel

Pork fat is solid at room temperature. You can heat it to 55°C (131°F), add methoxide and mix for an hour. You'll get biodiesel. Now, Ive never done this but since the fat was solid at room temperature, you can bet your shorts, the biodiesel will be solid at temperatures higher than 0°C (32°F). So only vegetable oil for winter.

Geting your car to run on biodiesel at low temperatures is an art. Some people mix it with petrodiesel, some people heat their fuel filter, others put in additives (by the way additives for petrodiesel - don't work all that well). The best thing to do is to forget biodiesel over the winter. I know you didn't want to hear that answer, but let's be realistic, nobody likes to get up at 5:00 in the morning, to find out the car won't start.

There are ways to get your biodiesel to staj liquid down to about -15°C (5°F) using just the stuff you already have in your garage, but I've not tested it to the point where I would be comfortable writing about it on this page. Give me a little time, to do some more research, and I'll post it here in the future (with pictures)!

Washing and Drying biodiesel

Some people say you don't need to wash biodiesel. But raw biodiesel from the reactor contains left over methanol, glicerin, soap, and who knows what else. I didn't wash my biodiesel when I used it in my 17 year old VW golf, but now that I have a 4 year old VW passat, I simply have to.
I pump most of my biodiesel into a container, making sure no glicerin gets sucked in. Then I add some water (about 20% the amount of biodiesel). Throw in a bubbling stone like the ones in an aquarium, and turn on the aquarium pump. There should be as little agitation as possible.
The bubbling stone is at the bottom of the container - where the water is. The bubbles get covered by water, and they take the water with them toward the top. After bursting, the water is released and sinks back down to the bottom, cleaning biodiesel on the way.
The water gets white and looks rather like milk.
This bubbling should last about 4 to 8 hours. Then I change the water, and repeat this process, but this time I leave the water in the container for 12 hours. After changing this milky water for fresh water, I bubblewash for another 24 hours.
I change the water once again and bubblewash for another 24 hours.
I now let the washed biodiesel settle by lifting the bubbling stone higher than the level of the water, so that the bubbling stone sends bubbles directly into the biodiesel.
Water in the biodiesel settles back down with the rest of the water, and some of the water evaporates because I keep sending in dry air through the aquarium pump.
After 24 hours I turn the aquarium pump off, and suck the water from the bottom of the container. This water is used for the first washing in the next batch of biodiesel.
For the last 24 hours I've really been drying my biodiesel, and I continue to do so, for another 24 hours.
Dry biodiesel is absolutely clear, and beautifull to look at.
View a video of the third wash.
This is the final wash where you'll see that the water and biodiesel are clean. The bubbling is also set stronger as with the first and second washes.

Actually making my biodiesel

First of all I need to make my methoxide.
I put 34 litres of methanol in a carboy and add the 765 grames of NaOH, closing it tightly. Then I swirl it around two or three times and put it down. Every now and then I return to swirl it again, left and right, two or three times, until I can't hear the lye move inside anymore because it's disolved. This usually takes the same time that it takes 170 litres of oil to come to a temperature of 55°C (131°F).
Now I put 170 litres of oil in my reactor and turn on the 2000W heater I took from a brocken down washing mashine.
Now it takes about one hour for the oil to get hot enough, and the methoxide to be fully mixed.
I start the pump that suckes oil from the reaktor and returns it back in. I open the valve that has a hose on it that is emerged into the methoxide, and the pump starts sucking, not only oil from the reactor but also methoxide - returning it all into the reactor.
There's a valve on top of the reactor with a long hose leading outdoors as far away from the garage as possible, and as low as possible (methanol fumes are heavier than air, so I let them go downhill away from me).
This valve is needed because putting 34 litres of methoxide in my reactor requires 34 litres of fumes to be removed from the processor. Plus, there is a chemical reaction going on in the reactor which brings additional heat and expanssion. (don't have your oil preheated over 55°C).
After all methoxide is in the processor I close the valve on top.
I now, let it mix for a whole hour (although I'm pretty sure the reaction is over in 40 minutes), and I keep the heat at 55°C (131°F).
Now I unplug anything that is electrical and leave it alone for 24 hours.
The next day 180 litres of biodiesel is sitting on top of 24 litres of glicerol.
So you see it really only takes 1 hour to heat the oil and another hour to mix it. That's two hours and you have biodiesel. Biodiesel that I used in my 1989 VW golf.
Problems I had using biodiesel were my fuel lines, which were made of rubber and had to be replaced every 3 months. Oh yeah, before I forget, my little golf died once and needed to be hauled off to a garage, my injector pump had parts made of rubber too!
The mechanic told me he installed silicon parts instead of rubber, but he had no idea if that was better or not, cause he had no previous interaction with biodiesel himself.
Well I wasn't ready to sit around and wait to find out. I simply sold "old faithfull" and bought a 2002 VW passat. The brosure said it was "biodiesel safe" but only with biodiesel sold at gas stations. For me that simply meant washing and drying were from now on - a must.
Have been using washed and dried biodiesel in my passat for about 16.000km (10.000 miles), since may 2006, and have had no problems so far.

Geting waste vegetable oil

I get my waste oil from the same place over and over again. This is very important, because I know that it's water free, and I practicaly don't have to do titration. It turned out to be the same everytime I did it. Never have I had a bad batch.
When I bring it home, I let it settle for about 14 days. No filtering is necessary. I simply suck the beautifull oil off the top. Here I must tell you that the oil I get is really clean, so "no filtering" might not work for others as well, but letting it sit still for 14 days really works for me just fine! All the crap falls to the bottom.
Just to tell you how clean my oil is... the amount of lye that I put in the methanol is 4,5 grams per liter of waste oil.
So that's 170 litres of oil, 34 litres of methanol, and 765 grams of lye (NaOH).
This brings me (believe it or not) 180litres of raw biodiesel and 24 litres of glicerol.
Now here comes the funny part.
After bubble washing the biodiesel I get about 170 litres of clean biodiesel. The missing 10 litres must be evaporated methanol and soap in the dirty water (I'm really not sure).
All these numbers were not really measured, so don't hang me by my crackers if I'm off by a liter or two!! These are just my notes!
Also, these notes should not be used as a guideline in producing biodiesel. Methanol and lye are dangerous, and you should educate yourself fully before handling these toxic materials! These are just my notes!

Making biodiesel

Making biodiesel is the easiest part of the whole car fueling process. It takes about 2 hours of your time and that's that.
A greater problem is washing and drying your biodiesel which takes days. Of course you don't have to be present all the time, but still it takes a lot of time.
Some of the problems I have found with biodiesel are:
- Methanol (starts to evaporate at 65°C [150°F]. The fumes are heavier than air. Very toxic)
- Methanol can ignite with invisible flame.
- Cold starting problems accur at relatively high temperatures.(around 0°C [32°F] you should start using normal diesel or your filter will plug) - see a forum about this on BioDieselNow.