Has anybody ever made Bio-Diesel for RCs  
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All Forums >> Glow Engines, Gas Engines, Fuel & Mfg Support Forums >> RC Fuels >> Has anybody ever made Bio-Diesel for RCs
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Has anybody ever made Bio-Diesel for RCs - 6/8/2006 8:06:20 PM   
the62


 

Posts: 2
Joined: 6/8/2006
From: brooklyn, NY, USA
Status: offline 		Good afternoon all,
My name is matthew mcguinness of the 62 an art collective located in brooklyn NY. i am adressing the board with questions and interest in running RC Cars on Bio-Diesel. The fuel we shall be making is from waste vegetable oils. As i have perused the message board i noticed that there are some for an against the diesel smell emission, this would be resolved by oders raging from popcorn to frenchfries to burning frying pans.

This idea, running cars with a diesel engine or conversion engine seemingly is possible, now the question is the variable of changing up the fuel
from 1/3 kerosene, 1/3 ether, 1/3 castor oil to 1/3 kerosene, 1/3 ether, 1/3 bio-diesel. Does that sound possible?

My knowledge in RC engines and fuel are growing up from nill. The extent of radio control car experience rabges from almost twenty years ago qwith the frog and the hornet and then the famed RC-10, i guess the old school.

I have spoken with Bob Davis a few months ago and I understood the project as a possibility, then my partner spoke with him recently and it sounded as if it was a no go. We would love to hear any feed back. all feedback as we are amatuers and it is th eveteran voice we seek to head.
sincerely
thank you
matthew

and please take a look at other succesful works
www.the62.org


       Post #: 1

RE: Has anybody ever made Bio-Diesel for RCs - 6/8/2006 8:18:24 PM   
SGC


 

Posts: 1020
Joined: 12/8/2004
From: OAKEYQueensland, AUSTRALIA
Status: online 		the62,
The bio diesel would be replaceing the kerosine- the fuel/power component of the mix , not the castor oil -lubrucation part of the mix.
That said the final proportions of the castor/ether/bio diesel will depend on the particular motor you are running and the final quality of the bio diesel you make. You may only need 20% castor in your fuel and the ether may need adjusting up/down to get easy starting and good power- higher ether improves starting , higher kero/bio diesel improves power output, a happy balance needs to be found.
Stewart

(in reply to the62)
       Post #: 2

RE: Has anybody ever made Bio-Diesel for RCs - 6/8/2006 9:01:09 PM   
donkey doctor



Posts: 1172
Joined: 12/1/2002
From: Lake Cowichan, BC, CANADA
Status: offline 		Hello; I get the feeling that there is a basic mis-understanding of our term "diesel" as it applies to our model airplane engines: As we all know, diesels (be they insustrial or for automotive use) rely on the heat of the compressed intake mixture to ignite an injected fuel, the timing of the injection being critical to the running of the engine. In our airplane "deisels" there is no injection, the fuel is carried in with the intake mixture, and when the heat occurs, the fuel lights off. Hopefully this explosion will occur at a time that is usefull to the engine to push the piston down and turn the prop. We have no other control over the combustion moment then our fuel blend.

In an automotive diesel the moment of injection is controlled by the injection pump, or by a cam on the camshaft (for Jimmys and earlier Cummins) as well as the duration and amount of fuel injected. A Bio-Diesel fuel could be easily formulated that would work okay if we could control when it is injected, for how long, and precisely how much is injected. We can't do this with our simple diesel fuel system. What we could do is find a mixture that will explode just when we want it to, made of a combination or chemicals, arrived at by trial and error. If this is what you hope to achieve, good luck to you, I hope you do succeed. I am sure that there is a mixture that will do that, but then will it work in all conditions that an engine has to work under?

I don't want you to think that I'm discourageing you in any way, but I don't think that you have a full understanding of what is required. I'm also curious why we need a substitute for our kero/ether/oil fuel.

(in reply to SGC)
       Post #: 3

RE: Has anybody ever made Bio-Diesel for RCs - 6/8/2006 9:47:42 PM   
Jim Thomerson



Posts: 2778
Joined: 10/9/2002
From: Austin, TX, USA
Status: offline 		It's not that we need a replacement. It seems more a matter of can they use their biodiesel to run model engines? I read that Eric Clutton experimented with using peanut oil instead of kerosene. I don't see why biodiesel won't work, or for that matter why vegetable oil won't work in place of kerosene. No idea how they compare in energy content.

As a side question, why not just run filtered used vegetable oil and not bother with turning it into biodiesel? The Mythbusters program did a comparison of regular diesel and filtered (rather poorly I thought) used vegetable oil. Vegetable oil ran fine and gave 33 MPG compared to 35 MPG for regular diesel.

< Message edited by Jim Thomerson -- 6/8/2006 9:48:54 PM >

(in reply to donkey doctor)
       Post #: 4

RE: Has anybody ever made Bio-Diesel for RCs - 6/8/2006 10:43:58 PM   
Hobbsy



Posts: 10426
Joined: 12/2/2001
From: Colonial Beach, VA, USA
Status: offline 		Gentlemen, I'm going to have to move this to the RC Fuel Forum, Thanks.

_____________________________

"I have gone faster backwards, upside down and on fire than most people have gone at all" Don Garlits

(in reply to Jim Thomerson)
       Post #: 5

RE: Has anybody ever made Bio-Diesel for RCs - 6/14/2006 7:25:04 PM   
Lou Crane


 

Posts: 222
Joined: 5/11/2006
From: Sierra Vista, AZ, USA
Status: offline 		Matthew,

I think you see the difference between big and little diesels from prior posts. You did mention RC Cars, tho, so the small, model engines should apply.

To your question: It is possible to reconstitute cooking oils and use them to substitute for petroleum derived kerosene. An article in Aeromodeller magazine (UK, now apparently defunct) spelled out the process. The article appeared in the 1970's or 1980's.

I went through the method and brewed some up, blended a diesel fuel using it, and tried it. It worked, but was quite harsh running, tricky to get running, and had little tolerance for rapid changes of load - or, I imagine, throttle. (I tested in a non-throttled engine.)

If CompuServe's Modelnet is still active, and still has its old archived files available, I copied the Aeromodeller article and posted it there. Not sure if you need to be a 'registered member' to get at such archives, as I left CompuServe/CIS several years ago when a cable modem server came locally available.

The main "offensive" odor with diesel model engines is the ether needed to ignite the fuel under compression heating. For RC car use, particularly, you will likely need a high RPM engine type. There are several high performance aircraft model diesels available, from Europe and the former SSRs.

Luck! Lou Crane, BTHS'57

_____________________________

\BEST\LOU
Lou Crane, Sierra Vista, AZ

(in reply to SGC)
       Post #: 6

RE: Has anybody ever made Bio-Diesel for RCs - 6/27/2006 9:39:55 PM   
the62


 

Posts: 2
Joined: 6/8/2006
From: brooklyn, NY, USA
Status: offline 		Thanks all
you have been extremely helpful. we are making some exciting headway with the possiblity
to run these buggies on alternative fuels. as the moment is now, i have just made nearly all the changes in my ford f350 to running on wvo, though its not an rc, i see all in way turning green, like the stones said paint it black. i will post again when this particular project's green light lights up. i thnak you all for being so supportive and allowing me points to further research. please stay tuned.
best matthew

(in reply to Lou Crane)
       Post #: 7

RE: Has anybody ever made Bio-Diesel for RCs - 7/1/2006 12:03:13 AM   
thefencer


 

Posts: 11
Joined: 5/29/2006
From: Niles, OH, USA
Status: offline 		I make biodiesel for real cars, it is very nice. Cheap, and it has the same power a normal diesel. However the word "diesel" refers to the type of engine, not the fuel. I believe that this was addressed above

< Message edited by thefencer -- 7/1/2006 12:05:13 AM >

(in reply to the62)
       Post #: 8

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