Some thoughts on Biodiesel from an early experimenter. In 2002 I attended a presentation on alternative fuels, specifically Biodiesel, held by a group of young... I'll call them hippies for lack of a better term, traveling across the country in a converted Greyhound bus running on veggie oil. Being a relatively environmentally conscience individual and always looking for business opportunities I bought the book they were selling, a small concise book on making biodiesel from waste vegetable oil and/or converting any diesel vehicle to run on straight veggie oil. I read the book and immediately became enamored with the idea of making my own fuel. Thoughts of toppling the oil industry began running through my head and I was off and running planning my next big “change the world” business idea.
 
I did some additional research on-line and found that there was quite a bit of information about the home production of biodiesel. I visited a few local farms who were making biodiesel on a small scale using home made processors utilizing 55 gallon drums and waste vegetable oil acquired from a local restaurant. I initially had some concerns about possible adverse effects on the vehicles, but was assured by all who I spoke with that other than having to change the fuel filter after initially starting to use biodiesel their tractors all ran fine on it. So with all this good news I made the decision to start producing biodiesel in as large of quantities as I could.
 
At first, being largely underfunded, I thought building my own processor would be the easiest and cheapest way to get started. But after a many days of design and redesign work I decided it would be easier and more cost effective to stop trying to reinvent the wheel and purchase a ready made kit to get started. I researched the available processors for sale and finally settled on the ****** for a cost of $2999.95. I found three investors to contribute $1500 each and bought the unit and rented a shop to start production in. The processor included two tanks large enough to process and wash 55 gallons of fuel, all the hoses and connections, mixing pump, and all the measuring cups and testing equipment required to do the titration, along with detailed instructions on making biodiesel.
 
The first thing I needed to do was to secure a steady supply of waste vegetable oil. Since, at the time, there was essentially no one else making biodiesel on any large scale, at least in my little corner of the world, all I needed to do was to approach a few of the local restaurants about collecting their waste oil. Since all the restaurants were paying to have their oil removed it was a simple matter of offering to pick up their oil for free. So in no time I was picking up waste oil for almost a dozen restaurants in the local area, a job that turned out to be not nearly as glamorous as it sounds.
 
The processor worked fine, though eventually needed numerous modifications to produce a product that could be safely run in anything other than the simplest diesel engine. A lesson learned by a couple of very expensive repair bills to some newer diesel trucks whose high tech engines and fuel systems didn't like the biodiesel very much. Eventually I began producing a clean quality product which worked well. It wasn't to long before most of the local diesel drivers were coming by to get my biodiesel, especially since I was selling it for nearly a dollar less than the local gas stations were selling regular diesel. Before to long I had 4 guys working for me, paying themselves in biodiesel, and the operation was paying for itself and putting a little money in my pocket working only a few hours a week. All was good with the world.
 
After a while I began considering expanding the operation. I started looking for larger sources of waste veggie oil and planning what it would take to start producing biodiesel on a larger scale. At the time we were making about 500 gallons of biodiesel a month. I decided that if I was going to do this I would need to be making at least 10 thousand gallons a month to make a full time salary. However I quickly realized that there wasn't 10 thousand gallons of waste oil a month produced in our valley, which meant traveling to get the oil. The expansion in the facility necessary to process that much biodiesel would increase along with labor expenses. Not to mention that once I was producing that much fuel the government would require their piece in the form of fuel and road taxes. By this time the word about biodiesel had gotten out and other people were beginning to break into the market. As I was collecting the waste oil for free, now these newbies were offering to pay for the waste oil. The numbers just kept getting worse and worse as I continued to look into staying in the business. I also began looking at the overall effect that producing large amounts of biodiesel would have on the oil industry. What I found was that the U.S. uses over a billion barrels of diesel every day. If you took every inch of arable land and committed it to producing oil producing plants for biodiesel it wouldn't even make a scratch in the overall diesel demand. And we'd have to decided between food and fuel. At this point I decided to get while the getting was good. I put the business up for sale and in less than a month was able to sell the whole thing lock stock and barrel(s) to a local high school who started an alternative fuel program.
 
After it was all said and done my view on biodiesel is still pretty good. I like the fact that an individual can easily produce his/her own fuel at home for their own use. I thought at one point while looking for larger sources of oil that growing algae for oil would be a way to go and low and behold at the time of this writing “biodiesel from algae” seems to be all the rage. However growing enough algae would take a relatively large pond and processing equipment in itself, however I believe it to be a good avenue for the committed “off the gridder”.
 
Would I ever do biodiesel again? Absolutely. Though it'll have to wait until I'm on my piece of land and can produce my own plant oil, probably algae, and will be for personal or neighborhood use only.
 
Via Rob - A Southern Oregon Resident and OilUsed Author