Hi! This is Jason Burroughs with Diesel Green Fuels. Today we have been showing you how to make your own biodiesel. Now once you make your own biodiesel, you are obviously going to want to store it and then use it in your vehicle. In this section, we will talk about these two topics.
Now, in order to store biodiesel, you can put it in any standard HDPE which is High-density polyethylene container. It's won't dissolve this. There are different color codes for different industries. There is yellowish diesel, bluish kerosene and reddish gasoline. We recommend that you never use red, that way you don't mix it up with your gasoline, but it's okay to use the yellow or the blue. In any case, once you put it into your car, you are pouring it in just like you would pour any fuel. So nothing special there.
Now, once you put it in your car, there are three issues that you should be aware of with using biodiesel. The first issue to talk about is fuel lines. Now, your vehicle, if it's made after 1992, is ready to go; no modifications are required. However, before 1992, auto manufacturer used natural rubber for some of the fuel lines. Those rubber fuel lines will need to be replaced with something called Viton or a Viton compatible hose. For most vehicles, this is less than $20 in parts and takes about 30 minutes. You could do it yourself or hire a mechanic to do it.
The next issue to be aware of is your fuel filter. Over the years of using diesel in your car, what's happened is, you have acquired this layer of sludge at the bottom of the tank. It's a paraffin waxy substance that normally would be harmless. However, when you put this really strong solvent of biodiesel into your fuel system over the first few weeks or months, you are going to find that all that stuff is going to passed through the system and go into your fuel filter. Some people report this is as a loss of power or a failure to accelerate at high RPMs. If you start seeing this problem, your first culprit is your fuel filter. So get yourself a new fuel filter right away and keep it in your car just in case. If you have to change your fuel filter one time, typically you won't have to do it again. It's a one time process.
Now the third thing you need to be aware of is the cold flow properties of biodiesel. Diesel is designed for year-round weather. It's has additives in it to make sure that it goes into the coldest winter in Minnesota or Alaska or pretty much anywhere in the world. Biodiesel doesn't have that property. So when you see biodiesel, you can put it in your refrigerator and come out at 30 degrees and find that this is solid as a rock. So depending on the feed stock that was used to make the biodiesel, that's going to determine the properties of biodiesel. This biodiesel here was made from waste vegetable oil and it's going to be thin and liquid down to about 30 degrees. This biodiesel was made from animal fat. It's going to be thin and liquid down to about 55 degrees.
Now down here in the Texas, that's not too much of a problem for us. In your climate, that might differ. So what I recommend is that you talk to the supplier of biodiesel or if it's vegetable oil, assume a cold point of about 40 degrees. If you are going to get into a climate that's colder than your cloud point, then you are going to want to mix in some diesel into your tank, maybe 20%, maybe 50%. This is something that you are going to need to do more research on.
Now, in order to find out more information about this, I recommend that you go to the Internet. There are a number of good message boards out there if you just simply Google for biodiesel, you are going to find a lot of resources. My favorite is biodieselcommunity.org this is the site put together by hobbyist that share information, share tips and it's a great place to bounce ideas off of it and get more information. I also recommend that you seek out people in your own community. We find that people that do this in a group have a much greater chance to success than doing it by themselves. So this concludes our video series on how to make biodiesel.
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