Bio fuel clogging engines...

[rogdeb]

I just heard the last 10 minutes of a conversation with a talk show host on the radio....... don't know how much I missed then ... sooooo ...

The caller was an "expert" in the use of bio fuels v regular gas for the State or Fed dept he worked for. His particular expertise was in the maintenance and running of Emergency Vehicles for the police, fire depts, etc, for his area. The use of Bio Fuels for all his emergency vehicles had been discontinued, as they found that in cold conditions, the bio fuel thickened considerably which gummed up the engines, which would then not start. Who knew? Not me.

Soooooo .... My question. What is really a bio fuel in this case? Gasoline with 10% ethanol? I just read in the AMA mag. that gas with 15% ethanol is destroying boat and jet ski engines.

What am I doing here ???? I dunno --- the start of a topic to be relegated to "never ending pointless......."

Thoughts or answers anyone ???

 

[Ignacio]

He's probably talking about diesel and fleet service. The bio portion they add sometimes has issues with colder temperatures (usually vegetable oil or animal fat with alcohol). They can run up to 20% bio under normal conditions (B20), but sometimes have issues with low temperatures.

 

[FJRay]

Well we all know the definition of an expert.

In the marine world when biodiesel first became avaliable there were various problems with filtering and gelling when cold. I used it in the diesel cook stove in my boat because I had a seperate tank that stayed warm enough.

I haven't heard off biogas. I have seen problems related to the use of ethanol in things like chainsaws and weed whackers that use pulse type carbs. In some older boats with fiberglass tanks there have been problems with he tanks getting soft and leaking. speaking of that for us old farts. remember the white pump chevron that you couldn't use in your Triumph Bonneville cause it would melt the tank. That was good ****.

So I really don't know a damn thing about it but you got to put up with me wasting your time

 

[FJRBluesman]

Think of biofuel (the animal/plant oil fat kind) in the cold like clogged arteries. Yep, that happens when it gets cold. They need to figure out how to keep the fuel viscous at very cold temperatures.

All this talk about alternative fuels, what many people fail to realize are the extreme temperatures at both ends of the spectrum they must operate.

So briefly let’s look at aircraft. I know Boeing has operated biofuel engines (Plant bio) in turbine engines. They even employed the Elstrom Unlimted Hydroplane boat (out of Washington, piloted by racing legend Chip Hanauer), renamed it U-787, for testing the fuel at sea level, much cheaper than a jet. They eventually graduated to a jet, but it's still a long way off as an alternative fuel for all cases in jet aircraft.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPTk7Gds41k&feature=player_detailpage

Side note: The U-787 lap times were the fastest time on the water on Lake Washington that day. They weren't even racing just testing.

**EDIT** Found link that they state this and other neat Hydro stuff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOeBrsXfkzI&NR=1&feature=endscreen

What about piston powered aircraft? Other issues we don't have on the ground with bio fuels.

It all sounds real easy for these alternative solutions, but it needs to be refined more and proven. That doesn't happen in a lab or overnight.

Just sayin'.

 

[Ignacio]

Side note: The U-787 lap times were the fastest time on the water on Lake Washington that day. They weren't even racing just testing.

They debuted the boat the week before where I live. Chip's a class guy....we've talked Merlins, FJRs, and Jettas before.

We also did some biodiesel testing a few years ago in our local transit operation.

 

[GalaxyBlue]

Bio fuel is less efficient than standard also.

I run a B5-B10 blend in my Ram Diesel just for the added lubrication properties, But at a cost of about 3mpg less.

Gasoline with Ethanol is just the devil... It hurts engines that were not designed for it by eating the rubber seals, And getting sticky in the tank,lines,injectors when evaporation happens, AND is LESS efficient than standard Gasoline.

Of course, YMMV...

 

[xcsp]

Gasoline with Ethanol is just the devil... It hurts engines that were not designed for it by eating the rubber seals, And getting sticky in the tank,lines,injectors when evaporation happens, AND is LESS efficient than standard Gasoline.

Of course, YMMV...

Gasoline with Ethanol is the devil for most users, but not so much for those profiting from the sales of it.

Ask the guys with Ducatis that had their plastic fuel tanks swell from using fuel w/ ethanol how they like it.

 

[Bustanut joker]

My ex employer had issues with fuel tanks and fuel gauge floats. Fecking ethanol was trashing both.

Add to that it seems to attract water and strangely boats need to be in it.

Never was able to find out what the fix was but I'm sure it wasn't cheap.

 

[ionbeam]

All common diesel fuel starts to have gel issues at 14°F and has a waxing point around 5°F. Bio diesel starts to form wax crystals at ~40°F. One solution is to add a thinner like kerosene. These days there are several highly concentrated additives that extend the gel/wax point well below zero.

 

My home heating oil tank lives outside and has provided me with an education about diesel oil gel and wax points. Nothing gets your attention like a Saturday morning when it's -10°F outside with a 40 mph wind causing the oil tank to wax solid. I had paid a royal sum for a long time to purchase Special Heating Oil that won't wax only to find out that they were delivering the heating oil sans additive. There were hundreds of truckers that purchased Special Oil from this same company that were stranded beside the road with waxed tanks too. When I called the oil company the lady that I spoke with started the conversation by saying there is NOTHING I can say to her about her company's failure that exceeds what she has heard from the stranded truckers. Within 30 minutes they had someone at my house with a magic additive that fluidized my tank again.

 

 

[J Paul]

I work with many govt and transit fleets in the DC area and the most common complaint when they went to biodiesel is it acts like a solvent and flushes all residue from the tank and lines.One garbage fleet started including spare fuel filters on each truck just to make the day when they first converted.J Paul

 

[rogdeb]

Thanks guys You just gave me an education.

So I figure the talk show conversation was about bio DEISEL, that's the crucial part I missed. I had to ask ..... and you all answered .. thanks again. :thumbsupsmiley:

 

[FJRBluesman]

Just sayin' here.

Penny for penny nothing beats petroleum based fuel we now use. It's incredibly efficient, burns well, it's clean, and is usable for the majority of our needs in most climates. I'd love to see some other fuel source take it's place and be cleaner and cheaper. Not sure if or when that will ever happen. Something that works so well and is so cheap, even at today's prices (but I'd love to see it back under a buck), you can't beat it.

Think of this.

1) A petroleum company must search for oil, very costly.

2) They must then build something to extract the crude from the ground/ocean levels (again very costly).

3) They must haul it by ship halfway around the world (not cheap here either).

4) They then have to refine the crude into usable fuels, kerosene, Jet, gasoline, heating, etc, and other things (talking about costly and the permits, etc).

5) Now they transport it all over the state/country to it's distributing destination.

6) The gas station stores and sells the finished product, all for about $3.50 a gallon as of today. Not too bad I'd say.

One of the other draw backs from using bio-diesel is there's not enough of the bio part, we'd run out quickly. Plant bio has all sorts of issues, like does a farmer grow food for people or fuel. Which pays me more? What happens if the crops are wiped out? Oops no fuel and what is around costs mega $$. Can't make that up by pumping more, it has to grow again. Also to sustain the growth for supplying all our fuel needs you'd have to pretty much have a farm the size of all of Asia or larger.

Lots of things to consider. It would be nice to have alternative fuels that work, are environmentally friendly, are cheap, and don't damage plastic or rubber parts. :blink:

 

[HotRodZilla]

On the same subject, the City of Albuquerque began using the E85 fuel in all their FlexFuel vehicles a few years back. They stopped after they started going through fuel pumps and expensive fuel delivery related parts about every 10k miles.

It's just not worth the cost to change to alternative fuels if those fuels are going to force engines to work harder to get similar performance, and the fuel is going to damage expensive parts on a regular basis.

 

[bluejag]

Alot of our Fleet has to run on bid spec fuel bottom of the barrel to start The bid gasoline with an E10 rating does NOT include an additive package to combat it's effects. The diesel bid fuel also does not contain the proper additve package as well! (all to meet low bid pricing for state bid) Also one of the most important issues with bio is that it is based on a living organisim (corn soy other plants) This makes the bio portion of the fuel HIGHLY suseptable to the formation of alge...yes pond scum! we have some tier 3 diesel equipment that will NOT run on bad fuel as they were built (with FED and State emissions) that are so stringent it's a nightmare to keep this equipment running properly. We have to (at great expense) add an aftermarket additve package to our fuels(making it more expensive than bid price per gal.) increased service expense for more frequent filter service ect. So all in all our gov.really screwed the pooch on this whole concept of alternitve energy as usual 1)Gov. subsidized 2)not sustainable Food or Fuel witch do YOU prefer?? 3)MORE expensive to produce AND does more harm that good!!! Yep there's a gov. program for ya :yahoo:

 

[frito1]

My employer is one of the 800 pound gorillas in bio diesel production. It's quite an interesting business. Our bio looks like water in a sample jar. Done right, cold weather is no more an issue than with petro diesel. Done wrong it looks like lard. It *is* an excellent solvent and will clean out any funk in the fuel system.

 

[Aasland]

Bringing it back to cold temps ....

Folks running biodiesel up here in the cold north figured out that they need a way to keep it warm, and installed a pre-heater that does just that.

As for regular diesel, we have two blends in the winter, #1 and #2. The winter version (I forget which) has some additives to help it flow in cooler temps. We can also buy those additives and add them ourselves. Even then, we would have problems. When the temps get down to 5F we weren't going anywhere in the F350 until it warmed up.

Personally ... I'm never buying another diesel unless I can help it. Just too much hassle, noise and cost up here in MN.