SchNEWS - DIY Guide - How to make Biodiesel

Making BioDiesel
- It's a piece of piss

There's nothing we like more at SchNEWS towers than a spot of DIY, be it a pint of homebrew or a free party. But one piece of DIY that we reckon is up there with free parties is home made diesel.

Yep, forget about handing your hard-earned coffers over to the corrupt, greedy and killing corporations like Shell and BP, take a squeezy bottle, a piece of sticky backed plastic and make your own biodiesel. No seriously, biodiesel is a fuel made from waste vegetable oil, of which there is literally tons of the stuff being dumped in landfill sites up and down the country! This otherwise waste is easily collected from chip shops and restaurants and without too much hassle processed to make biodiesel that can be used to run any diesel engine. Biodiesel, far from being an inferior homemade product, is better for your engine than the usual crappy fossil-based fuel that is helping to screw up the environment and people's health. Biodiesel can be made in your own backyard with little start up cost involved and works out at about 30 pence per litre. Wanna know more? Then read on.

Let's first rewind and go back to the beginning of the 1900s where Dr Rudolf Diesel has just invented the diesel engine and is displaying it at the Paris exhibition. Sat right there is the mother of all diesel engines happily chugging away running on peanut oil! Rudolf had designed the Diesel engine to be run a variety of fuels and during his Paris speech said, "the diesel engine can be fed with vegetable oils and will help considerably in the development of the agriculture of the countries which use it." Sounds good for developing countries but not so good for the petroleum industry. A few years later and Rudolf Diesel's body is found drifting face down in the English Channel. After holding secret talks with the UK navy about fitting diesel engines into their submarine fleet Rudolf Diesel was killed by the French to stop his diesel technology being fitted into submarines over the world, nothing new there then! After Diesel's death the petroleum industry capitalised on the diesel engine by naming one of their crappy by-products of petroleum distillation 'diesel fuel'. That's how dirty diesel fuel has come to be the fuel for diesel engines.

Fast-forward to the beginning of a brave new millennium, one where oil is running out, the climate is fucked and Biodiesel can save the world, well no but it can do its bit!

A few facts on biodiesel

Biodiesel is biodegradable and non-toxic. 100% biodiesel is as biodegradable as sugar and less toxic than table salt. It biodegrades up-to four times faster than petroleum diesel fuel with up-to 98% biodegradation in three weeks. However, contrary to a popular misconception, it stores indefinitely in completely full, cool, dark containers. Compared to crappy fossil fuel diesel, biodiesel has the following emissions characteristics:

For every one ton of fossil fuel burnt, 3 tons of CO2 is released into the atmosphere, biodiesel only releases the CO2 that it has taken in while the plants it is made from were growing, therefore there is no negative impact on the carbon cycle.

How to build a single tank biodiesel processor

Firstly though, we have to say that our biodiesel expert is not longer involved in SchNEWS so we are not able to offer any advice or further information on the subject further than what's here. There are websites listed at the bottom of the page which contain loads more info. Please don't email us asking questions about biodiesel as we won't be able to help.

Equipment required

You also need to fashion a simple wooden measuring stick with 10 litre increments.

A hydrometer is a good piece of kit to have to measure the specific gravity of the biodiesel. The specific gravity of biodiesel should be between 0.860 and 0.900, usually 0.880. The specific gravity of vegetable oil is 0.920 therefore the specific gravity of biodiesel should be lower than the vegetable oil used to make the biodiesel.

Every time you make a new batch of biodiesel using old vegetable oil you have to find out the amount of reactants required to get the correct reaction, this process is know as titration. In addition to the above equipment you will also need the following equipment:

The third step is to combine the methanol with the Sodium Hydroxide to create sodium methoxide, an extremely strong base. Once the Sodium Hydroxide has been dissolved in the methanol, the sodium methoxide must be mixed with the vegetable oil straight away.

Settling takes about 8 hours but since 75% of the separation occurs within the first hour after the reaction immediate separation will be visible. Within 8 hours the glycerine will have fallen to the bottom leaving a layer on top, this is methyl esters, or more commonly referred to as biodiesel

After blending the contents can either be transferred into a 1500ml container with a stopcock or left in the blender for at least 8 hours.

So there you have it, fuel from vegetable oil. Of course this is only one method of making biodiesel, there are many recipes for making biodiesel just take a look through the web sites at the end of this article. Don't be fooled into thinking that biodiesel is anything but a serious contender in the alternative fuels market, throughout the world there are commercial processors being built to supply a rapidly emerging market. The UK government however, has chosen to ignore biodiesel, this is their mistake and something we can capitalise on. Let's start making biodiesel and get production down to the local small scale level with co-operatives and individuals supplying all our needs while taking power away from the mega-corporations.

For more information on biodiesel check out www.planetfuels.co.uk rather than emailing us (please, you wouldn't believe how many people do email us) - we're no experts, unfortunately. Alternatively the first book on the following website (LILI: how to make biodiesel by Dan Carter & Jon Halle) has been recommended to us: www.lowimpact.org/acatalog/books_biodiesel.html The Low Impact Living Initiative website also has other information and equipment for biodiesel and other related topics.

Making BioDiesel - It's a piece of piss

Making BioDiesel
- It's a piece of piss