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FAQs

Q  What is the miles per gallon difference between Biodiesel, SVO, and petro diesel?
A  None, unless you want to get picky and then it's a bunch of conflicting reports stating 1-5% differences.

Q  How does the vehicle drive on the various fuels?
A  The same, except for the smell.  Biofuels smell like a BBQ grill going down the road.

Q  What is the procedure for switching to vegetable oil during startup?
A  The engine is started on diesel or biodiesel to create heat.  That heated water is circulated along the entire vegetable oil fuel system to the vegoil tank and back, just enough to warm the oil so it will flow.  The engine temp gauge on the dash reads 160F and you're ready to flip the switch and feed vegoil to the engine instead of diesel.  The same switch turns off the diesel fuel pump and turns on the vegoil fuel pump. 
   To shut the engine down, there is a 45-60 second purge time to clear the injection lines of vegoil so it doesn't gel as the engine cools. 

Q  What does it cost to convert a vehicle to run SVO?
A  Depending on the vehicle (car or truck) and whether or not you want an official kit or a homemade one, the cost ranges from $1000-$2000 (some newer trucks are even more).

Q  How much will my SVO fuel cost?
A  Half the price of diesel. 

Q  How much diesel or B99 will I consume?
A  Depending on your average trip length you will use a gallon of diesel for every 100-200 miles driven on SVO.

87 F250 Greasetruck for sale
converted by Greasel, now Golden Fuels
long bed, xtra cab, bed rack
4 spd, 4x4, 125k, some front end damage
PDF

Thank these restaurants for supplying used oil:

Aleworks

Bennigans

Vann's IGA

Bridger Bowl

Montana State University

La Parilla

Lone Peak Brewery

Big Sky Resort

Gourmet Gas Station

Taco Time of 4-Corners

Arby's

Cat's Paw

Casa Sanchez

K2 Cafe

If your restaurant wants to join the list, email here.

Biofuels defined
Biodiesel
Straight Vegetable Oil
 - Which way to go, Bio or SVO
 - Collecting your own oil
 - Filtration

Before you contact me, you MUST read this entire page.  I may test you to make sure.  There are many biofuels experts who can't answer their phone or respond to email anymore due to the sheer volume of inquiries.  If you get paid for doing your job then realize that this is my job, which I've spent five years learning and I've never had a trust fund.  I am glad to answer a few questions after which paid consulting can follow, including consultations on vehicle conversions, oil filtration, solar energy, electric vehicles, and shop time for vehicle conversions.  I simply cannot school you from square one unless you're willing to pay for it (see Consulting page).  If you've gotten this far I know you can read, which isn't as much fun as getting tutored, but works .... so below is square one.  Enjoy!

Biofuels are plant-based fuels biodiesel, straight vegetable oil, and ethanol, versus petroleum based (geologically aged plant material).  The world's first internal combustion engine was a diesel, invented in 1897 by Rudolph Diesel and exhibited at the world's fair in Paris.  His goal was to build an engine that ran on oils from crops, which could be farmed using the engine, to create more oil, etc.  Rudolph was not excited about the switch to petroleum fuels, and predicted that we would return to the originally intended fuel eventually.  Biofuels are superior to petroleum fuels, and the benefits don't stop there.  They can be domestically produced, have significantly lower emissions, make engines run longer, and are quickly becoming mainstream.  Soon it could very well be that we see petroleum fuel as alternative. 

Biodiesel (BD) is substitute for Petro Diesel and is made from oil seed crops such as soybean and canola.  Any diesel can take Biodiesel without modification to the engine or vehicle, so there is no such thing as Converting to Biodiesel unless your talking about the mental decision to switch.  Biodiesel is comprised of about 80% vegetable oil, 20% methanol (high grade petroleum fuel), and a small amount of lye (sodium hydroxide).  A chemical transformation called transesterification takes place which reduces the viscosity and allows the fuel to flow thru filters and burn much like petro diesel.  In other words vegetable oil simply needs to be thinned in order for the diesel engine to utilize it.  Thinning can be accomplished by chemically reacting vegetable oil with methanol and lye as described above, or see the next section for another option.   

Straight Vegetable Oil (SVO) is burned by any diesel vehicle with the addition of a heated supply of filtered vegetable oil fuel, no modifications to the engine are necessary.  Used vegetable oil needs to be significantly filtered and treated before hand.  Virgin oil can be purchased and burned without the filtering process, but is more expensive.  Bozeman Biofuels hopes to have a supply of filtered used vegetable oil available for sale locally for homebrewing of biodiesel or for running SVO vehicles on, thereby eliminating the ongoing aggravation of collecting and filtering oil.  The Bozeman Biofuels truck (94 Chevy 6.5L Turbodiesel) now has over 30,000 miles of SVO behind it!  With a 105 gallon veggie tank, it can make trips to Oregon and back averaging 18 mpg, with no stops at gas stations (except to wash the windshield, that is).  Not counting SVO, this truck averages more than 400 mpg of diesel.

Which way to go... BD or SVO
The common question at this point is whether or not to convert your diesel to SVO, to join Bozeman Biofuels Membership biodiesel buying group, have Bozeman Biofuels or Story Distributing drop off a 55-gal drum of certified BD, or brew your own BD.  The table below summarizes the comparisons.

- The easiest route is to buy biodiesel made at a huge plant where they know what they're doing and their product is certified.  However, as of July 2008 there is not biodiesel available locally due to the price surge to $6/gal nationwide. 

- Making your own BD (much like brewing beer) from virgin oil can be straight forward, but obtaining small quantities of oil for a reasonable price is challenging unless you have a canola farm and a seed press.  Keep in mind that the price of methanol is about $3.50/gal, and if BD is comprised of 20% methanol you're already spending $.70/gal just for that one ingredient.  In addition, you'll need winter additives to enable your vehicle to use a significant blend.

- Making your own BD from used oil is possible and people are doing it all over the world, but it's tricky because your oil stock is different for every batch of fuel.  The chemistry dictates varying amounts of methanol and lye, and when you don't get it right you end up with undue amounts of byproducts.  Currently, some BD homebrewers are making a bad name for biodiesel by creating their own little toxic waste dumps and not properly disposing of the byproducts, and creating sub-standard fuel.  If you are a science geek and very detail oriented, you may well pull it off.  Nobody I know of has been successful at making BD with a kit they purchased, all have needed significant improvements costing roughly 4 times the "kit" price. 

- Converting to SVO requires the one time effort of installing a heated fuel system in your vehicle, and periodic maintenance (mainly changing the SVO filter and tightening hose clamps), and a high tolerance for experimentation and troubleshooting, and an on-going effort to collect and filter fuel unless you can purchase filtered oil.  The diesel system is unaltered, but in order to deliver hot vegetable oil to the engine you need to have a vegoil tank, pump, and filter, and that system needs to be heated mainly with engine coolant and also some electric heat.  Once it's complete, you just put straight vegoil into the tank, warm up the engine on diesel/biodiesel, flip the switch after 3-5 minutes and you're on straight vegetable oil. 
     The hardest part of any conversion is routing fuel, water and electric lines, which means drilling holes and thinking it thru.  In Montana, ALL fuel line must be married with hot water lines if you want to drive thru the winter. 
     Next comes the challenge of collecting and filtering used cooking oil.  Firstly, there is no kit or set of plans that you can start with that will work without major modifications.  Secondly, used oil is increasingly hard to find (see collecting oil info below).  The smaller the quantity, the easier it is to filter but people commonly do not dewater their fuel which will ruin the engine after 10-30k miles (so it will seem like it is working for quite some time). 

     Also, collecting oil requires an agreement with the restaurant AND the current oil collector.  TAKING OIL FROM DRUMS BEHIND RESTAURANTS IS THEFT FROM WHOEVER OWNS THE DRUM & THE OIL.  You've probably seen it in the news by now, and it's no light matter: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/251/story/44048.html  Why do oil collectors despise this?  Because people who illegally collect generally take only the best oil from the top of the drum, leaving the dregs for someone else to dispose of, and they commonly leave messes behind and leave lids off to collect rain water.  There's nothing worse than showing up to collect oil to find that there is none, only drums partially full of water and dregs, which are difficult to remove and worthless.  The oil collector is on a schedule and depends on a consistent volume of oil to balance usage needs.  Please do not punish those who are serious about using used cooking oil by pilfering their supply.  We are responsible for collecting the oil year round and not leaving restaurants in the lurch.  If you're doing this because you are traveling, then consider the fact that you will not be able to dewater the oil while you're on the road unless you have a very elaborate mobile filtering system.  I will gladly sell you filtered, dehydrated oil which will not clog your filter.
     This web site lists the oil sources used for collecting Bozeman Biofuels oil and I ask that those sources are respected.  Since the oil is valuable and finite in volume, it is quickly becoming scarce.  If you choose to collect your own oil and have a hard time finding any, it is simply due to a first come, first serve situation.  The people who have invested vast amounts of time and significant financial resources to experiment with the fuel have first right to the fuel for which they are collecting under contract with the restaurant.  I've tried to make the fuel available for purchase to allow travelers as well as locals to skip the whole collection/filtration fiasco and go right to the fun part of driving a converted vehicle.  Filtering is not easy on a small scale, as large vessels and lots of heat are the key, which fills up a garage in a hurry.  By using an SVO boiler to do the heating, which is already running to heat the renewable energy demonstration guest house, I've been able to accomplish the job petroleum free for a mere $12k investment.  If you think there is money in collecting and filtering 'free' oil, think again.  Unless you go large scale it is more work than anyone I know cares to take on.  I started into this when diesel was well under $2/gal, so you know I'm not in it for the $$$.  To be able to buy filtered & dehydrated oil at $1.48 + road tax is cheaper than any small scale filtration system, and I wish I wasn't the first one to do it here so I could just skip that 3 years and buy $2/gal SVO.

Thanks to The Garage, Aleworks, La Parilla, Dave's Sushi, Bennigans, Over the Tapas, Bridger Bowl Ski Area, Vans IGA, Smith's, Gourmet Gas Station, Aspen Point & Heeb's Grocery for all the fuel so far! 
 

FACTS ON BIODIESEL
(taken from National Biodiesel Board web site in April 2007)
Carbon Dioxide (CO2) emissions of biodiesel burning vehicles is reduced by 78% as compared to petroleum diesel
* Particulate emissions reduced by 47%
* Unburned Hydrocarbons reduced by 67%
* Ozone forming compounds reduced by 50%
* Carbon Monoxide (CO) reduced by 48%
* Sulfur Oxides (SO2, acid rain) at the tailpipe reduced by infinity since BD has no sulfur content, and by 2006 diesel fuel must contain 15 parts per million sulfur (current standard is 500 ppm), however, lowering the sulfur content of petro diesel also removes lubricity
* PAH (human health cancer causing compounds) reduced by 50-90%
* NOx (nitrous oxide) essentially unchanged

* 324% Fossil Fuel Efficiency:  for every unit of fossil fuel energy used to produce biodiesel, 3.24 units of energy is returned - compare that to 83% efficiency of petroleum diesel

* Non-toxic and biodegradable: USDA tests conclude that biodiesel is 10 times less toxic than table salt
* Does not burn on its own: throw a match into a drum of biodiesel and the match goes out

Biodiesel: it’s hard to be allergic to. It’s clean, no dirt on it anywhere. It’s a true no brainer once you study it. It’s cleaner to burn: it produces a quarter [of] the carbon dioxide as petro diesel, half the particulate or smoke, half the carbon monoxide, reduces all carcinogens by at least half and most by 80%. Compared to petroleum diesel it exhausts just a third of the unburned hydrocarbons, has infinitely less sulfur, meaning zero or none (sulfur is acid rain), and is 10 times less toxic than table salt. Spills biodegrade faster than sugar, and throw a match in a barrel of biodiesel and the match goes out.

It [BD] comes from dozens of crops, with 100 million gallons worth of biodiesel stored in our soybean reserves alone right now. Another 100 million gallons worth per year is coming out of restaurants. Use waste fryer oil or virgin oil, burn straight oil in your altered diesel vehicle or brew it into biodiesel and use it in any diesel– it doesn’t matter. Buy it right here in Bozeman from Story Distributing. All you need is a diesel, so search the local papers or one of the web sites below like greasecar or ebay (links below).

Borrowed from Portland's Biodiesel Coop:  www.go-biodiesel.org
GRAPH KEY: THC = total hydrocarbons CO = carbon monoxide NOx = nitrogen oxides PAH = polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons nPAH = nitrated PAH B20 = 20% biodiesel, 80% diesel B100 = 100% biodiesel — Source: Cincinatti Office of Environmental Management & US Department of Energy NREL studies. World Energy studies show significantly lower emissions.
 

Current Supply of BD
All biodiesel is obtained thru Story Distributing, who imports it from Iowa.  It is fully ASTM certified fuel, and CURRENLY AVAILABLE AT A 5% BLEND AT PACIFIC PRIDE IN BELGRADE.  .
 

A note about Story Distributing:  Yellowstone Park obtains all of its Biodiesel thru Story, and frankly the only reason the Bozeman area has any biodiesel available is due to Dan Alexander's devotion to biofuels.  Dan has worked with Bozeman Biofuels and provided great information for our endeavors and endless support of our ideas. 

Bringing Renewable Energy to Bozeman
and Southwest Montana

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