Alternative Car Engine Fuel Conversion
Your local gas station isn't the only place you can fill up your tank. If you are interested in producing biodiesel, you could do it at home. Just make sure that your biodiesel is clean, so begin by using pure vegetable oil. When you get the hang of making biodiesel on a small scale, you could increase your production by collecting and filtering waste vegetable oil from restaurants.
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Things You'll Need
- New vegetable oil
- Rubber gloves
- Safety glasses
- Electric heating element
- Erlenmeyer flask
- Thermometer
- Methanol
- Lye
- 2-liter polyethylene bottle
- Balance
- Funnel
- Spatula
- Magnetic stirrer
- Heat lamp
- Separatory funnel
Instructions
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1
Put on all of your safety equipment, including clothes, goggles, a head covering and thick rubber gloves.
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2
Use a funnel to pour 48 ounces of clean vegetable oil into a flask or another type of jar that can be heated over a stove. Slowly heat the oil until it reaches between 120 degrees and 130 degrees F. Turn down the stove and use a heat lamp to help regulate the temperature of the vegetable oil. If possible, turn the stove off and put the vegetable oil onto a magnetic stirring unit with a stirrer inside.
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3
Measure out 5 grams of lye using a balance and pour it through another funnel into a 2-liter plastic bottle. Seal the top to the lye's original container so that it does not continue to absorb moisture from the air, rendering it useless for future biodiesel production.
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4
Add 1.4 liters of methanol to the 2-liter plastic bottle, which has the lye in it. Screw on the cap to the bottle and shake it gently so that the methanol is able to react with the lye, dissolving it. Do not be alarmed if the bottle begins to heat up from the chemical reaction.
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5
Pour the methanol-lye solution, which is now methoxide, into the vegetable oil. Allow the vegetable oil and methoxide solution to stir for at least two hours. After two hours, the basic components for biodiesel are present; however, there are other solutions, such as glycerin, that need to be filtered off.
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Pour the biodiesel solution into a tool known as a "separatory" funnel. Allow the glycerin to settle into the bottom of the funnel. Drain the glycerin from the biodiesel solution by turning the stopcock.
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Pour the biodiesel solution into a distiller so that the excess methanol can be separated from the mixture. Save the methanol so that you can use it again for another batch of biodiesel. Heat the distiller's primary flask until the methanol has separated and condensed through the tube into the secondary flask or container.
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8
Add 1/2 liter of water to the biodiesel solution. This will allow you to wash the biodiesel solution and drain off more traces of glycerin and lye remnants.
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9
Pour the biodiesel-water mixture into another separatory funnel. Insert an air pump and hose assembly into the separatory funnel to further wash the biodiesel. Run the air pump for three minutes, which will help to coax the water and glycerine remnants to separate from the biodiesel solution. Drain off the water, which will separate to the bottom of the funnel.
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10
Test the separated water with pH strips. Continue the previous step, adding more water to wash the biodiesel solution until the pH of the separated water is 12 or higher.
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11
Aerate the biodiesel with an air pump for the next three days. This dry the biodiesel and separate it from any water molecules still left in the solution.
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Add biodiesel to your diesel engine. Separately, you can also add biodiesel to a kerosene heater and some home furnaces.
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References
Resources
- Photo Credit bottle with oil and tomato image by Olga Rumiantseva from Fotolia.com
