[Franco Cozzo]

Originally Posted by roKWiz

Filled up today, 1.88 in Wang still. 30ltrs of diesel 60 ltrs of cooking oil.

Now lets think, a country that thives on take away fried food. and something that turns diesel into a cleaner burning fuel.

There was a group in SA a few years back who teamed up with a chemical scientist or something and made a biodiesel processor which made high volumes of very high quality biodiesel out of tallow which is a waste product from our meat industry.

At one point Adelaide's metro bus fleet was running on a large percentage of biodiesel in Scania Euro 5 buses and had increased performance and lower emissions using this locally produced biodiesel.

Then the federal government made biodiesel an 'exciseable' fuel and killed it overnight because the price went up and everyone went back to petrodiesel, maybe worth revisiting?

One of the problems with Bio-diesel is that it is a generic term that is also often misused. Amateurs have used vegetable oil in older diesel engines (which works reasonably well) but this is not biodiesel and does produce more particulates as well as having a higher viscosity and the associated blockage problems.

Biodiesel itself is a broad term that describes the family of Mono Alkyl Esters which vary in properties depending on which fatty acid they are derived from. For example, Tallow methyl ester (which we made in Adelaide) has a very high energy density, high cetane, does not gel above 0degC, high lubricity, low viscosity and has lower particulate emissions than petro diesel. Canola methyl ester (which we also made but was expensive) has a lower energy density, high cetane, does not gel above minus 20decC, lower lubricity, lower viscosity and low particulate emissions. Palm Oil methyl ester (we did not make this but is made in indonesia) has lower energy density, low viscosity, does not gel above 10degC, lower cetane, lower lubricity and has low particulate emission.

Commercially made biodiesel is an extremely pure fuel which allows far higher engine performance than petro-diesel which we proved in trials with Adelaide's diesel powered metro trains and the new (at the time) euro5 Scania metro buses. The uniform molecular size and shape also means the lubricity of pure biodiesel is superior to petro diesel. (think synthetic oil vs mineral oil) A lot of this benefit is still seen at B20 (20% biodiesel). At B5, not much benefit is left.

Thats the words from his mouth, or rather fingers

I think its worth a revisit, given the current market we find ourselves in.