Home brewing Biodiesel

arborworks1

arborworks1

Treehouser
Joined
Oct 17, 2006
Messages
2,754
Location
hartsville, sc
With all the fuel prices elevating, has anyone taken up brewing bio yet. Northen tool has several kits available.

Would like to hear some input if anyone is attempting to beat the system so to speak.
 
my neighbor brews it but just about blew his shop up 2 wks ago from not batching right and he sells it to me for 2.99 a gallon but only 100 gallons a month
 
It has gotten very hard to get Veggi oil as the bio-diesel guys have pretty much cornered the market on all the donut shops, restaurants, etc which generate used oil.

might be different in other areas tho....
 
stehansen said:
Being tree guys we need to find some way to use wood chips to fuel our vehicles.
Click to expand...
I think it was Nathional Geographic about a month or two ago talked about the very same thing.

All oil started out as plant life.Eons of years and pressure determined weather it would end up as natural gas,crude oil ,peat or coal. It doesn't make much diff if it's wood chips or dandilions the BTU's are there if you figure how to extract them in a usable form .

Some years ago on the discovery channel this guy in Pa was making his own home brew gasoline.He used an old fuel oil tank as an oven and filled it full of wood,garbage,anything organic and cooked it on a wood fire under pressure.Bingo,crude oil.He ran this stuff through a simple vacuum still,crude gasoline.Most likely about 70-80 octane but it worked .

Oh,for what it's worth,there are several gallons of crude oil in an old tire.The basic rational behind modern science,Matter is neither made nor destroyed,it's form is changed.The tire started out as oil and to oil it shall return .
 
Al Smith said:
I think it was Nathional Geographic about a month or two ago talked about the very same thing.

All oil started out as plant life.Eons of years and pressure determined weather it would end up as natural gas,crude oil ,peat or coal. It doesn't make much diff if it's wood chips or dandilions the BTU's are there if you figure how to extract them in a usable form .

Some years ago on the discovery channel this guy in Pa was making his own home brew gasoline.He used an old fuel oil tank as an oven and filled it full of wood,garbage,anything organic and cooked it on a wood fire under pressure.Bingo,crude oil.He ran this stuff through a simple vacuum still,crude gasoline.Most likely about 70-80 octane but it worked .

Oh,for what it's worth,there are several gallons of crude oil in an old tire.The basic rational behind modern science,Matter is neither made nor destroyed,it's form is changed.The tire started out as oil and to oil it shall return .
Click to expand...

There was a pile of tires about 20 miles from here that was hit by lightening a few years back and I guess oil ran out from under the pile while it was burning.
 
There is a fella that has been perfecting a process (that i can't remember the proper name of) for almost 20 years now; whereby he can take a given type of trash and hit it with a given frequency of microwaves and crack it apart into oil/energy. He has the frequency tuned right for some common specific types of trash like tires. With the right frequency, the process is equitable. Just some ol'codger that stuck to his guns while everyone laughed at him. He now has some fear of being found; by those that would stand to lose large by such a system.

Fossil fuels are one of my favorite examples to the kids of energy never being destroyed, nor created; only exchanged and altered; a finite source. Instead of teaching them as my father taught me to eat everything and waste not/ want not everything costs money, some starving kid in UgaBunga would be glad fer that meal etc. i teach'em that some plant or animal died so they could eat, and transfer that energy; and they should respect it; the money from not wasting is just icing on the cake. So finish, give scraps to dawgs, birds and 4' lizard, mulch; then recycle. Also, all the energy came from the Sun as thermal to grow plants etc. These traces of friction exchanges/inefficiencies and brakings we talk about in our ropes, Portys etc.; is the heat energy released back to said atmosphere in my book.
 
I suppose you could look at energy in what ever form about like water.

They used water from some source in Columbus Ohio to make that can of Bud I drank last night.You can only rent the stuff so I got rid of the excess on the side of an oak tree.This most likely will find it's way to Lake Erie,over the falls and out the St Lawerence to the Atlantic.

In time this will evaporate and get sucked into a rain cloud which will come over land and hit a cold patch of air ,perhaps over Atlanta .Soo,if I got this figured out right perhaps in time I will have taken a pee on somebody at long range.Pleasant thought.:lol:
 
When you figure in the road tax that you need to pay per gallon of "home brew." the option looks a lot less attractive. And if you don't pay they WILL catch you and they WILL "estimate" how much you've already used illegally.

Now if you burn oil in your home, that might work out nicely. Apparently, oil boilers are happy to burn it.
 
Tom_Scheller said:
When you figure in the road tax that you need to pay per gallon of "home brew." the option looks a lot less attractive. And if you don't pay they WILL catch you and they WILL "estimate" how much you've already used illegally.
Click to expand...
Well,that figures ,I might have known.

You take a tree for example,you don't pay any taxes on it.Cut it into lumber,make a building out of .The gov taxes you on your own labor etc .

Now what is wrong with this picture.

In the case of K-1 the taxes aren't figured in the pump price.You get to pay other taxes that cost just as much.I'm telling you if they could figure out how to tax the air we breathe it would be done.:(

I think you can legally make about 200 gallons of moonshine though,with a permit.As far as I know nothing says you have to drink it though .

We might as well face facts the gov has us by the short hairs and aren't going to let up. If you find a good thing they either tax it or make it illeagal .Oooor some ultra conserative declares it immoral.
 
been do'n the homebrew thing now for 3 yrs, works great.
wood chips to gas = woodgas, brown gas... check youtube on woodgas, it might be my next project
 
stehansen said:
Being tree guys we need to find some way to use wood chips to fuel our vehicles.
Click to expand...

There is a way ... Google Wood Gasifier...
Even FEMA has a publication on it.
Farmers used it during WW2 for example to run their tractors.
Basic principle.....
Smolder organics ie: wood chips to make flamable gas... pipe into an engine through an intake with a simple valve for air mixture and ignite gas in piston chamber. Yes folks... will work on most older internal combustion engines.
Remember "flash back" from fire fighting?? accumulation of hot gases from fire (slow smoldering) added to oxygen with a heat source goes fwoooosh...
Add compression and ignite...
Its pretty cool ... We may be experimenting with it here in a year or so. Just sorta checking into the idea...
Thinking a genny will be the first project.
 
Last edited:
That charcoal burner idea is older than the hills .

It is basically the same thing or principal as "producer " gas that was used in the steel mills about the turn of the 1900's .

In that period of time electricity in hugh amounts was not available so the mills produced their own using gasses that were the byproducts of the coke used in the huge open hearth furnaces .

Mother earth news had an article on this type of stuff some 30 years ago .What they found out was that without proper filtration they wore out a 6 cylinder Pontiac engine in a very short time . I also think they had to use a spacer under the cylinder head to lower the engines compression for this stuff to work .

For you movie buffs ,they depicted this type of thing in the Mad Max movies .
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

greengreer
Time for a chipper upgrade, what's your preference?
2
Replies
34
Views
3K
greengreer
greengreer
Knotorious
Rock Exotica Omni Block 1.1" Pulley for Use On A Harness Bridge - Is It Insufficient or Am I Just Trippin'?
Replies
10
Views
1K
Knotorious
Knotorious
Knotorious
What is the MEANING behind your USERNAME here at The Tree House?
2 3
Replies
53
Views
3K
flushcut
flushcut
Knotorious
Seeking Advice for Proper Rope Walking Technique and Any Other Relevant/Helpful Information!
Replies
10
Views
1K
Knotorious
Knotorious
M
Hearing Loss
Replies
0
Views
794
murphy4trees
M
Back
Top