First.. A happy and peaceful New Year to everyone.
Still following the thread with great interest and I have been very interested in the experiments done by Merugo and the comments around them.
Just before Christmas there was an item on T.V about a UK based trawler which operates in the North Sea. It has been converted, at quite a high cost, to run on bio-diesel. The bio-diesel is not really competitive on cost as the fishing and agricultural industries get their diesel without having to pay the high tax that road transport has to pay for diesel fuel here in the UK. They hope to switch to what they called "tallow" which they explained was the thick sludge left in the bottom of the pan after frying stuff. The tallow would be a lot cheaper than the bio-diesel or conventional diesel.
They are heating the bio-diesel before sending it to the engine. i can only imagine that this is to improve vapourisation at the injectors by lowering the fuels viscosity. You could see where this would be desirable with the thicker "tallow" when they get around to using it but..... we are talking about a big diesel engine in a trawler and they still felt the need to heat the bio-diesel.
If a trawler diesel engine needs pre-heating of the bio-diesel then I suspect that the simple engines that we use AS diesels are not going to have a very happy time with trying to run bio-fuel.
The aim of the trawler experiment is to reduce CO2. A trawler typically throws out 37 tons of CO2
during a 10 day trip at sea. The average car throws out about 2 tons of CO2 in a year. The vegetable oil has consumed CO2 during it's plant phase so is less detrimental even though it gives it off again when used as a fuel.
I think we have made great progress since the start of this topic and the experimenting continues.
I found success with a mix of synthetic oil and olive oil with some ether still retained. I want to remove the ether when the weather allows flying again this year and stay with the synthetic oil and modified olive oil combined as the lubricant.
Low ether mixes ran well with either synthetic oil or olive oil and some castor. However the best engine runs and really good idle came from combining the synthetic and modified olive oil.
Why ? I don't know. Could the olive oil be contributing a higher viscosity which improved piston seal ??? I am open to ideas [
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I am pleased to see that the "Baker Black Bitumastic Substitute" (or whatever it is currently called) is doing so well and indeed some 5 to 6 gallons have been run.... well done.
Who would have thought... before this topic started up... that you could reduce the ether content right down to about 6%, use pump diesel instead of kerosene and use the waste oil from your car's oil change to run a model diesel engine...... can 2007 improve on this ???
Reg