My friend and I are both PhD Chemists, and recently invested in a Biodiesel plant from the United States with the idea that we could use Waste Vegetable Oil from Chip shops etc for making Biodiesel.  However we don't seem to be able to get enough Vegetable oil.  The processing is producing top notch Biodiesel (as analysed by GC Mass spec and NMR).  We wondered if anyone was interested in going into a collaboration since we have the technology and the expertise to produce the Biodiesel, and you have the rapeseed and the knowledge of how to get it pressed and selling it on for Cattle Cake.  The process can produce Biodiesel (which can also be used for heating oil) at about 18p per litre excluding the cost of the rapeseed oil.  The final product can be used either as Red diesel, heating fuel or paying the 27.1p duty as road legal fuel.  It can be sold on for Road use. 

Noel

Hi dr Noel

Hopefully your still around, this subject always fascinates me.Hopefully you found a supplier, maybe you need to go to a crusher whoever that would be.

If you had 100 litres of chip oil how much biodeisel would you get out of it.

Is vegetable oil exactly the same as rapeseed oil would be or is something added or taken out.

Been reading about a pair of old ladies who run their generator purely on chip oil .They made their proccessor themselves .It didnt go into detail but the main parts came from an old washing machine.

God luck with your project

                                             Jim

The only reason we are doing this is since we are chemistry teachers we thought it would be good to show the pupils how effective vegetable based products are, and it is now included in the new national science curriculm.

Chip oil is definetly the preferred method, it's Free!  However in order to run a car for a year you need to make about 1500 litres of BD a year, which is quite a lot of chip oil.  Anyone got any in the West Midlands

It's too expensive to use rapeseed oil.  and even palm oil is currently £420 a tonne delivered!

Vegetable oil is exactly the same as rapeseed oil (virually all fats are similar in their chemical structure), it depends on the original mixture whether it is solid or liquid.  The bigger the molecules the more likely it is to be solid.  Size Matters as they say .  What happens with vegetable oil is a triglyceride (big molecule with three long chain molecules of about 18 carbons linked to it by 3 ester group) this is reacted with the methanol / sodium hydroxide mixture (Methoxide) which breaks it up into what are called methyl esters and glycerol.  The methyl esters are the biodiesel and the glycerol is a waste product.  You need to add a 5:1 ratio of veg oil to methoxide and the yield is about 1litre of veg oil to 1 litre of biodiesel since the glycerol takes up about the same volume as the methanol you have added.

Its not a problem making a small processor.  The reaction will take place at room temperature, and can be done with a brew bucket and a drill stirrer.  The problem is the methoxide which is highly toxic, so a sealed reaction vessel is much safer.

Hi

Thanks for the reply, they were using methanol and caustic soda which l guess is the same as sodium hydroxide.

agitate slowly is that the case?

They use the glycerol to make soap ,hand degreaser or added to sawdust to make boiler fuel.

It says you need to wash the biodeisel 3 times to rid it of impurities, how would you do that.

Sounds like you are doing good work,l hope somebody can help you out.(come on you midlands farmers)

regards Jim

Jim your quite right, Caustic soda is Sodium Hydroxide (Industry calls it Caustic Soda).  The washing is done using water, the soaps dissolve, and the water layer falls to the bottom, since oil is less dense than water.  You repeat this process three times, and you end up with clean usable biodiesel.  Which is 100% carbon neutral (you could argue that the methanol is produced from natural gas, but its old name was wood alcohol, and it can be produced as a biproduct from charcoal), provides the engine with a more lubricating mixture so lasts longer (VW and Mercedes have run a lorry on Biodiesel for over 700,000 Km) and found improved fuel economy and less maintenance.

The future most certainly is in biofuels. 

Noel