My coworker Lee and I decided about a year ago that we both wanted to make a biodiesel processor. For those of you not familiar with biodiesel I'll give you a summary: Biodiesel is a fuel that is derived from vegetable or animal oil, which can be run in any diesel engine. Basically you take veggie oil, add some lye and methanol; heat it up and mix it well, and voila! you have biodiesel. A majority of the plans that we've found on the internet have recommended using a water heater as a reactor vessel, due to the fact that they are well insulated, have a thermostat controlled heat source, and can be found in working order for free. Lee and I happened to stumble onto just such a water heater on our way back
from Wendy's one lunchbreak, so we tossed it in my Golf and headed back to work. We then proceeded to hook up a pump and rewire it to eliminate the top heating element because it would not be submerged in the oil at all times and is therefore a fire hazard. Anyway, as you may be able to tell from the picture, it isn't quite finished and it has been sitting like that for several months now. Eventually we hope to finish it up and find a restaurant that would
be willing to donate some greasy goodness for us to run in our beaten up diesel VW's. This project is currently on hold. There are too many others that need to be completed first. I think that the CJ gets top priority, because I've expected the Golf to die for more than a year now and I need to free up garage space to fix up the Golf's replacement, a 1981 VW Diesel Rabbit Pickup. Somewhere in between these projects I hope to turn a three-season porch into a year-round sunroom, get married to my nearly perfect fiance, and try to keep our new house from falling apart around us. It should be a pretty exciting time.
My coworker Lee and I decided about a year ago that we both wanted to make a biodiesel processor. For those of you not familiar with biodiesel I'll give you a summary: Biodiesel is a fuel that is derived from vegetable or animal oil, which can be run in any diesel engine. Basically you take veggie oil, add some lye and methanol; heat it up and mix it well, and voila! you have biodiesel. A majority of the plans that we've found on the internet have recommended using a water heater as a reactor vessel, due to the fact that they are well insulated, have a thermostat controlled heat source, and can be found in working order for free. Lee and I happened to stumble onto just such a water heater on our way back
from Wendy's one lunchbreak, so we tossed it in my Golf and headed back to work. We then proceeded to hook up a pump and rewire it to eliminate the top heating element because it would not be submerged in the oil at all times and is therefore a fire hazard. Anyway, as you may be able to tell from the picture, it isn't quite finished and it has been sitting like that for several months now. Eventually we hope to finish it up and find a restaurant that would
be willing to donate some greasy goodness for us to run in our beaten up diesel VW's. This project is currently on hold. There are too many others that need to be completed first. I think that the CJ gets top priority, because I've expected the Golf to die for more than a year now and I need to free up garage space to fix up the Golf's replacement, a 1981 VW Diesel Rabbit Pickup. Somewhere in between these projects I hope to turn a three-season porch into a year-round sunroom, get married to my nearly perfect fiance, and try to keep our new house from falling apart around us. It should be a pretty exciting time.
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