The Mitsubishi Pajero Owners Club®

[seekay]

I will be honest dry have not been & had a look but I will when I get a moment in the light, my VW van is a 1999 & that has one my old van which was an 1996 did'nt so you may well be right.

[Google]

[boylone]

Great reading - very tempting to use veg oil. Cheep supplies direct from cash n carry .....

But is it a criminal offense or a civil offence not declaring the duty to custom and excise?

Anyone have such bad experience and prepared to share?

[oddjob2000]

No idea about criminal or civil, but a word of warning about injection pumps.

Two tankfuls after our veggie conversion, the car looked to be leaking oil. Investigations soon spotted that it was veg oil. Veg oil slowly dissolves rubber. Turned out two of the seals in the pump had literally been eaten away by the veg oil. probably weren't that good before the conversion, but they didn't leak before. Had the seals replaced with Nitrile instead of Rubber and all is fine, however, it added £150 to the conversion costs. (+ an afternoon spent cleaning veg oil off the new driveway blocks!)

[Lekim]

Have a look at this

http://www.biofuels.fsnet.co.uk/basics.htm

[boylone]

Thanks to you both, Lekim and oddjob2000.

I think it is not a crimanal offence - provided you fill in the necessary paperwork. Correct?

As for the fuel pump seals - it still is worth the risk. So........... maybe......

Cheers.

[Pyrogaz]

I posted this info on the Delica site a few months ago. It may seem a bit long winded but in reality doesn't take much time as long as you're practically minded

Despite what I say in the last couple of paragraphs I started my 2.8TD Delica yesterday morning at -6c with 70% Veg, 10% UL and 20% pump diesel. Started first time with no probs

OK, this is the batch method I have used for processing waste vegetable oil.

Equipment

2 x 250l steel oil drums, tops cut off and not the ones with a plastic lining
Thermometer up to 120c
1.2 m length on copper pipe bent into a “J” shape
Large aluminium sieve
J cloths or similar non-woven cleaning cloths
Old tights
Pump, the sort that you can run with a power drill
In line fuel filter, cheap one will do.
A few bricks
Selection of plastic tubing to match pump, fuel filter etc
Few jubilee clips
Suitable storage containers

Process

1. Support an oil drum on bricks so that you can build a small fire underneath, this is for heating the oil, if you’re not in a location where it is safe to use a fire for heating the oil you can use an immersion heater instead.
2. Put the sieve over an oil drum and line with the old tights, it’s best if you make up a simple timber frame to hold the sieve. You’ll probably collect the oil in 25l plastic containers, pour from these through the sieve until you have about 200 litres in the drum. This has removed any particles over about 200 micron
3. Heat the oil to 110c, I use scraps of wood, the dregs of oil from the original containers, paper, card. If you arrange the bricks under you drum carefully you can get quite an intense, clean fire. Alternatively an immersion heater will do the trick. This is done to drive off any water that may be dissolved in the oil, take care because steam bubbles rising though this amount of oil they can expand violently and spit oil everywhere.
4. Let the oil cool to about 60c, set up the sieve on the 2nd drum this time lined with 3 or 4 layer of j-cloth and pump the warm oil through it, you can do this with the oil cold but it takes a lot longer. We have now removed all particles over about 5 micron.
5. Cover the drum and let the oil sit for about a week or longer, after which you’ll see that there are two layers, on top is the clean oil, beneath is a thick, cloudy layer containing tallow, double bonded fats and fatty acids, depending on how much use the oil had this layer could be anything from zero to 30% of the total.
6. Get your storage containers and rig up the pump with the fuel filter and the “j” pipe, put the “j” pipe into the drum of oil making sure the upwards facing inlet is well above the thick layer; pump the oil through the filter into you containers. You can store the thick layer for a few months in sealed containers and it will settle out much more giving more clean oil.

Testing

For piece of mind I do a couple of tests to make sure the oil won’t cause blockages. Put a small sample into the fridge for a few hours to make sure it doesn’t go solid, if it goes cloudy try it again mixed with diesel in the proportions you intend putting in the car. It should stay clear at what will be about 2c, indicating that it is usable for all but the winter months.

You can also measure relative viscosity. Cut the base off a ½ litre Coke bottle and seal a piece of narrow tubing into the neck of the bottle so that all liquid has to leave the bottle via the tube. Support the bottle with the neck down above a suitable collecting container and draw a line on the outside at about the 250ml level. Fill to the line with oil whilst holding your finger over the outlet and then time how long it takes for the oil to run out. Do the same for diesel at the same temperature and then try various proportions, you may find it useful to draw a graph of your results.

Assuming it’s between March and October put your sample of diesel in the freezer until it is at –4c, if winter chill it to –14c, these are 1c above the temps that summer and winter diesel start to plug filters i.e. the coldest temp they can be used. Quickly carry out the viscosity check on this sample before it warms up, this time is a measure of the relative viscosity of diesel at the highest viscosity that international specifications assume it is suitable to start any engine.

Look on your graph or at your previous results and check if there is a mix of vegoil and diesel that has similar viscosity to the cold diesel, I found about 25% vegoil gave the same result and later that 45% veg, 5% UL and 50% diesel had the same viscosity. Obviously these results will be for mixes at temps of say 10c but they show that using them in most of spring, summer and autumn is no different from using a standard diesel on a winters day.

Duty

There is a national helpline in the phonebook for Customs and Excise, give them a call and ask for form EX103A, this a biodiesel producers registration form. They ask for things like equipment used, list it as drums, filters, pumps etc, and the product you are making is a processed biodiesel of 100% ester content.

I pay monthly (27.1p per litre), I’ve only just starting using it in the Delica (4 months) but have run other vehicles on vegoil for about 18 months as well as a co-gen system 24/7 for nearly two years. As long as the amounts you declare are reasonable then there won’t be any problems. You may be visited by an inspector, some are very helpful and are clearly interested in the environmental benefits others are total “jobs worths”, I was lucky as the one that came round to see me is into low impact living. Some people have had problems with their inspector trying to class vegoil as diesel substitute which would attract the full 47p duty, they should only be doing that to stuff like kerosene or parafin.


Use

In the Delica I know that when the fuel gauge is on half way between empty and ¼ it will take 60 litres to fill. I put in 30 litres of diesel and then when I get home add 3 litres unleaded. I then measure in 27 litres of vegoil, sometimes I’ve misjudged it and it won’t quite fit or it could take a bit more. All of these liquids are miscible in any quantity very easily, just a couple of sharp starts and stops will mix them fully.

More Complex stuff!

You can try making proper Biodiesel by transesterification of the vegoil, I’ve done a few batches of this stuff and it works extremely well, better than Dino in every respect, try this website for the best recipe and process explanation I’ve found, www.journeytoforever.org . You can make this and mix it with WVO as above, but it is always a good idea to carry out viscosity and clouding tests.

Sorry if any of this is over simple (or complex!), but it is a sound process that despite the long explanation only takes a couple of hours per batch. By my calculations if you do 18k miles per year, declare every litre of vegoil you use, then you would save about £900.

[markyd]

good informative post

[Pyrogaz]

Cheers Markyd.

Forgot to mention that I collect oil from a couple of pubs and 3 chippies whenever I'm passing and store it at home in 1000 litre plastic IBC's until I get time to process a couple of batches. I get all the oil for free

I reckon I'll use about 1800 litres this year in the Delica, and already use 8000 litres per year in my generator (Fiat 1.7D engine now been running 24/7 on 100% preheated vegoil for over a year )

The Mitsi engines seem to run much quieter and smoother with just a small amount of vegoil in the diesel, and personally I believe the improved lubricity of the fuel helps preserve the injection pump seals which were originally designed to run on diesel containing sulfur....... which acted as a lubricant.

Just for the record there is a forecourt pump re-manufacturer in Penrith who has over 400 pumps outside the workshop, virtually every one is there to have new valve seals fitted after handling diesel for a few years

[markyd]

Have you managed to overcome the overbearing smell

[boylone]

The smell is not that bad - quite pleasant sweet smell if the you get it just right!

Try it if you haven't already.

[Pyrogaz]

The smell is a bit of a cross between model aircraft engine exhaust and doner kebab Quite like it really

[Tester]

I've been following this thread with great interest, Pyro certainly appears to know his stuff

I don't think manufacturing my own from waste oil is really on in my current situation So I thought i'd research some oil prices, visiting Makro the other day I noticed you can get 20 Litres for about £10 (the cheapest bulk drum they do), Bookers are about £12 for the same quantity.

If i'm doing my math right, 20 litres for £10 = 50p litre, add 28.52p tax to keep it legal and above board = 78.52p per litre. Thats about 3p a litre off full priced diesel, if i run a mix of 2/3rds veg to 1/3rd diesel - i'll only be saving 2p nett per litre

It is certainly about time the gov't abondoned tax on 'renewable' fuels. Mind you the rebel in me still likes the idea the HM Gov't will 'only' get 29p a litre instead of the 49p they get for ulsd or 54p for 'ord' diesel.

Death and taxes grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

[stormforce1067]

hi all i have a toyota hilux surf and i have been putting in 10lt of v/oil to a tank. On our web site 1 of our members have been investigating the pros and cons of using it for the last couple of years.In his findings the city disiel from the likes of tesco and other large stores that sell city disiel is that there is nit sufficent lubricants in the fuel itself therefore being more wear on the fuel system.He is now running on 75% v/oil and at 46p a litre that is 1 hell of a saving compared to 85.9p lt of disiel.As far as i am concerned there is no need to involve customs and pay the extra tax just to use a greener fuel.

[overniushe]

I can't say that my experience was very rich. I have placed only two orders on this website and am satisfied with each one. These were two simple essays, but my basic writing skills aren't enough to write at least an introduction.