The information below was copied from the London Times auto help section. I don't know enough to comment either way, so its just FYI:

"Today’s fuels are produced to very tightly defined specifications to make sure they can meet the requirements of modern engines, minimise pollution and give optimum performance. To make sure that the fuel you buy has the properties and additives your engine needs, the specifications are defined in a set of British and European standards. By law all fuel sold must meet these standards. Why all the fuss about specifications and standards? Well, the most obvious purpose of fuel in a car is to burn and provide energy for the engine, but all fuels – petrol or diesel – are a complex mixture of chemicals with a variety of properties. Some of these properties are useful and manufacturers can exploit them before the fuel is burnt. Other properties are not at all useful and have to be overcome.
The main useful property is that, being oil based, fuels can act as a lubricant for the very accurately manufactured injection equipment. The lubricating property of diesel and petrol is a part of the standard, so engine designers can rely on the fuel lubricating their pumps and injectors to have the right lubricating qualities to keep things running smoothly. Additives may be included to ensure the fuel meets the standard.

The speed at which the fuel burns is another important factor which needs to be accurately controlled – this is indicated by the Octane rating for petrol or Cetane rating for diesel. If it burns too quickly, the engine will be overstressed and knock; if it burns too slowly you have a serious drop in engine efficiency and the exhaust valves are liable to burn out. Once again, engine designers can rely on a consistent rate of burning when they are specifying things like injector or ignition timing and they can programme the engine management system to optimise performance, economy and emissions.

Then there are the properties which need to be overcome, chief among which is the tendency for traces of heavier oils in the fuel to form deposits where you really don’t want them. These deposits stop the fuel atomising correctly, again reducing fuel efficiency. To avoid this, detergents are added which continually clean the deposits away.

In summary, manufacturers spend millions of pounds on research to ensure that the fuel you buy will run your engine at maximum efficiency. Oil companies in turn spend millions ensuring that the fuel on every filling station forecourt consistently meets the standards the manufacturers rely on and a whole department of government officials carry out checks to make sure everyone’s doing their job properly.

So, you can take advantage of all this research and regulation by filling up with fuel at a filling station, or you can simply tip some old vegetable oil in the tank and hope that it will have the right lubricating qualities, that it will burn at the right speed and then strip the injection system down from time to time in the hope that you’ll clean up all the deposits before they do permanent damage – the choice is yours! "

That is all true as far as it goes. It should also be noted that (a) your fuel supplier is responsible for warranting your engine for any damage caused by the fuel. If you put in something not sold initially as fuel, you become your own warranty.

And secondly, it should be noted that for at least the last year or so the British government has been on a serious campaign to discourage folks avoiding road taxes by burning either biodiesel or straight veggie oil in their diesel cars. In fact, there have been reports of people being arrested and fined heavily for this practice.

This is also illegal on the western side of the Great Pond, although to my knowledge, nobody has really gone after home brewers or folks running SVO.

On both sides of the pond, if you pay your taxes and get your fuel from reputable suppliers, you have nothing to worry about, either from the tax collector or from the engine warranty standpoint.

The IRS classifies homemade biodiesel as experimental fuel and thus non taxable, or they did last year.

However I think there is a restriction about selling to people or as home made beer & wine, only for personal use.

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91 MB 300D 2.5L Turbo. Her's

05 MB E320 CDI. Mine

Bio diesel in the UK is perfectly acceptable as far as the government is concerned..... if they get the tax. It is illegal to use veg oil as a fuel source in your vehicle over here.

The main problem with bio diesel is the natural resources needed to produce it (mainly cleared rainforest) in sufficient quantities to replace fossil fuel based diesel is unsustainable. The land required to grow the oil based plants (of which there are a few varities) is not available. It seems like a good idea until you realise this.

Ian

Sorry, Ian, but the rainforest argument is untrue, at least in North America and probably in Europe. In North America, biodiesel is being made primarily from soybeans grown right here: no rainforest involved in any way.

If you look into the future with it, I think you'll find that the most likely crops for the North American market are algae that are best grown on lands North American farmers are currently being paid to leave fallow. Again, no rainforests involved.

Your argument is being pushed heavily by folks with vested interests in the status quo. And it doesn't stand up to an in-depth examination of the matter.

In the US you are supposed to submit road tax regardless of the fuel used. Fuel retailers collect the tax on your behalf as a convenience for you. If you're homebrewing there's a form you have to submit to pay the tax for however many gallons you burn on the road.

Separate from that, you're allowed to brew (IIRC) 1,400 gallons/person/year for personal use without having to be a registered fuel producer and have your fuel certified, etc.

The 2 issues above are separate. You must always pay road tax on any fuel burned on public roads. You can go to biodieselnow.com and learn about the regulatory requirements,

Nice article - nothing like the government and oil companies working together. The UK is looking more and more like the US every day

And I'll second Naturist's comments. There's a good thread on this on the tdiclub.com forums. Both the new Algae sources, recycling, using crop waste, and planting oil-bearing crops while fields are fallow could all combine to supply all of our needed fuel. Heck, we're still paying farmers to not plant stuff on fertile land. Planting canola or other oil-bearing crops seems like a no-brainer to me.

Been using BioD from recycled fryer oil for the last thousand miles. No rainforests were harmed during my drive to work

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Chris
Current:
2007 Steel Blue Metallic Grand Cherokee CRD Limited
GDE Eco Tune and DPF delete
CB Engineering DPF delete pipe
EHM

Past (sold to Mountainman):
2005 Patriot Blue Liberty CRD Limited

Actually the amount of bio diesel being produced at the moment is a very small percentage of the amount required to replace fossil fuel based diesel. The land required for increased agricultural needs (including oil based plants) is thought to be responible for a loss of about 1 acre of rainforest per second!

Increased diesel requirements throughout the world (bearing in mind the economic revolutions in China and India) means that bio diesel cannot possibly replace or even signicantly suppliment fossil fuel based diesel.

Those partitioning the point of view that bio diesel is the answer to many of our future energy requirements are sadly mistaken. Unfortunately other options have to be explored. Hydrogen power seems to be coming out as a firm favourite. Being an environmental biologist, I don't fully understand this technology, but I do have a better than average of understanding of the biological resources on earth and they are finite and running out.

Ian

I have read in a few places that Algea Biodiesel is a better option than hydrogen but anything that reduces the oil dependency is good
http://www.unh.edu/p2/biodiesel/article_alge.html

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Meddle not in the affairs of Dragons
For you are crunchy and taste good with Catsup

Black 06CRD Sport, Yakima Safari cage, otherwise stock...

Ian, you are the environmental biologist, I am merely a chemist. I will tell you a secret: "hydrogen" is a red herring. It is perhaps useful as a means of moving energy from point A to point B (with a LOT of new technology needed) but IT IS NOT A PRIMARY SOURCE OF ENERGY and will never be so on this planet. The Laws of Thermodynamics preclude it. It is also a bust as a method of reducing petroleum useage, as the best ways we know of for making it, make it from petroleum or natural gas.

In essence, the advocates for hydrogen are mistaking a water pipe for a well. In the off chance of discovering new things, I support the efforts to "do something with hydrogen." Ie, I'll support basic research on about anything, but "hydrogen technology" is so far from producing anything of practical value, it isn't likely to help us out of the petroleum situation.

Secondly, the argument about whether biofuels in general, let alone biodiesel in particular, totally replacing petroleum useage for energy is disingenuous: we have never had a single energy source, and don't have one now. We need to replace petroleum to be sure, but there are no circumstances short of a miracle in which I can envision a single technology doing this in one swoop. What we need is a variety of technologies to replace parts of the problem. And biodiesel is merely one piece of that puzzle.

If I understand your concern, you are saying that if I plow up the rest of my 4 acres of clear bottomland, currently fallow in weeds and grass (as it has been since about 1960, as far as I can tell) to plant soybeans for biodiesel, I will be responsible for rainforest destruction somewhere. I disagree. And I am troubled by your insistence that my attempts to reduce my family's useage of petroleum is counterproductive. Simply put, your logic escapes me, and I note that following your line of thought here merely produces paralysis, which would be fatal if allowed to go unchallenged.

Yes, there is such a restriction on selling it. That does not, however, address state road taxes, due in every state in the US. I don't know about Missouri, but here in Virginia, to be strictly legal, one needs to buy an annual permit from the Commonwealth of Virginia. For an annual fee of $50, one is allowed to produce for personal consumption homemade fuel for highway use. Failing to buy that permit makes one a scufflaw, but I no of no one prosecuted for it at this time.

Xgecko, you should note that the best method of producing hydrogen is to extract it from petroleum or natural gas. Some way of saving petroleum/gas, huh?

And at the risk of repeating myself, hydrogen is a red herring. There are NO sources of hydrogen on this planet that do not require extracting that hydrogen from something else, resulting in a net energy loss, since you can never get back as much energy as it took to liberate the hydrogen in the first place. This is a consequence of the Laws of Thermodynamics, which are among the best understood and most explored laws of nature, and therefore least likely to be changed/amended by the efforts of mere mortals.

Growing crops specifically to make "virgin" biodiesel isn't he only method being worked on.

DaimlerChrysler is helping fund research into a proces called BTL, or Biomass To Liquid. In this process, you can use waste biomass, such as fallen dead trees, and process it into a useable form of biodiesel.

There's another process, called GTL, or Gas To Liquid, that converts natural gas to synthetic diesel. This is gaining some favor, as it's considerably easier to transport and store liquid diesel fuel than LNG.

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Mitchell Oates
'87 MB 300D Diamond Blue Metallic
'87 MB 300D - R.I.P. 12/08
'05 Sport CRD Stone White
Provent CCV Filter/AT2525 Muffler
Stanadyne 30 u/Cat 2 u Fuel Filters
Fumoto Drain/Fleetguard LF3487 Oil filter
V6 Airbox/Amsoil EAA Air Filter
Suncoast TC/Shift Kit/Aux Cooler
Kennedy Lift Pump/Return Fuel Cooler

One day they'll get the fusion reactor to work.....

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'04 KJ Cheokee CRD Pioneer Van
'06 Grand Cherokee 3.0 CRD Limited
'91 XJ 4.0 2Door Sport 4"lift, 31s, ARBs + other mods

there is a process out the they use carbon base materials ,which is most of the stuff that we put in a landfill,and can create a biomass which they can extract fuel out of.the energy question while is there is offset by the need to process the waste anyway.give a win-win situation with a domestic fuel source and clean up landfills.only thing in the way is the oil companies virtual monopoly on energy supply and techonologies that they buy up.