After all the discussion and banter, there is one undeniable fact...our (US) energy problems are very complex and will not be solved by one source. Economic, Political, Resource, Cultural, World Events and other factors will further complicate a perfect solution to our energy crisis. It is going to take a long term solution that goes above those roadblocks to improve the situation. America and Americans need to re-evaluate how we go about our daily activities and not take for granted that we will always have relatively "cheap" fuel to burn and waste. Honestly, there is no reason to have any passenger vehicles (does not include work vehicles that tow ect) that get 15 city and 19 hwy miles per gallon. We need to accept the fact that we need cars and reasonable SUVs that get 20 city and 25 hwy or better. When gas/Diesel prices exceed $3.00 this summer (and we know they will), I am going to find ways to cut back on trips and save some fuel+$$$. The EPA needs to fix the Emission Standards to reflect emissions relative to MPG Estimates (when you figure all the energy used to get gas/diesel to the pumps) so that higher mileage cars can get small breaks in immediate emissions to reflect thier overall emissions per gallon.. The list of needed improvements is almost overwhelming, but we have to start somewhere.

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Founder of L.O.S.T.
2006 CRD Sport
Mods: GDE Hot Tune w/ 364#@2000rpm/Air Box /3" Str8 Exhaust/ASFIR Alum Skids/245-75R-16 Cooper STT PRO/OME LIFT w/Clevis & 4 Spring Isos/AirTabs/Rigid 10" S2 LED/4xGuard Ctr Matrix Bumper
Drag Strip:Reac=.1078_60ft=2.224_1/8=10.39@64.8mph_1/4+16.46@80.8mph

Guys.. come on.. Attacking each other will get you nowhere fast. It does however have slight entertainment value. Questioning folk’s credentials is condescending and insulting. There are several people on this forum with advanced degrees in technology and the sciences. If you are going to start questioning credentials I believe the questioner should provide a quality source (alternative fuel research related) for every person he or she puts down... that means I want to see some sources with valid research instead of pointing to other forum threads. (APA format please) At the end of the day we still need an alternative fuel. I see good points from both sides. Some have given up on trying one method, have already formed a strong opinion and are going in another direction. Others are still trying to make it work. Some of us aren't rocket scientist, some of us are. I personally enjoy reading the opinions and ideas of all rather than reading school aged bickering.

Darby - I absolutely agree with everything you just said. In fact thats one of the larger points I make when I give talks on the topic. There is no 'silver bullet' for this problem and there really never will be. Our oil based economy has gone about as far as it can go, and its successors are going to have to use a mix from various renewable and non-renewable sources. The problem with BioFuels is that people are looking at them as though they are some sort of magic bullet, and ignoring the drawbacks. Everyone just wants the simplicity of going to the pump and putting fuel in and not worrying about if its right for their car, but its really never going to be as simple as it was over the past century again(short of going all-electric, which has its own drawbacks).

I do have some hope for the algae based BD that is being worked on now however. But even that is going to require a ton of chemical fertilizer for the nitrogen required.

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2006 Jeep Liberty Sport CRD

Not to get off the subject; north of where I live there are plans to build a 4 BILLION dollar coal to jet fuel/diesel plant. It is going to be in/near Wellsville, OH. They are to start on it in 08 and it will take 4 years to complete. The company building this plant claims that 1200 miners will need to work 24/7 to provide the amount of coal they need each year for the conversion process. We have lots of coal around here. They say that Pittsburgh Airport will be the major purchaser of their jet fuel. According to them the diesel will very clean. We need about 50-100 of they plants built in the U.S. One can only dream.

This is actually the Tropsch-Fischer process, and it is a very important intermediate step to wean ourselves off of foreign oil. There is enough coal in Montana alone to supply the US for about 40 years, and Montana represents only about a third of the US's coal supply.

The downsides are that coal mining is not environmentally friendly, and the coal based fuel, while cleaner than oil based, is still a pollutant and still puts out tons of CO2 when combusted.

That said, its a good first step to at least get us independant from the middle east(a serious priority). The good news is that the feds have caught on to that and are beginning to fund it.

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2006 Jeep Liberty Sport CRD

Biodiesel is corrosive to old natural rubber parts and to the diesel gunk inside your engine. Other than that the fuel is GOOD for the engine.

Most modern vehicles do not have any rubber in them. Most well-used diesels have a lot of gunk in them.

The fuel runs great in most engines and will not hurt any of them.

The main complaint/problem with biodiesel is that it gels in cold temps.

I run B20 up here in Seattle, where it is always cold. In the summer, I often run B100.

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Yours Truly,

Special Agent

Okay, wow, just read the whole thread. LOL.

Reflex, you started out using the anecdote of your friend's unpublished study to prove that BioD was corrosive and would hurt our engines.

Then you moved on to just not liking BioD because of socio-political/economic/environmental reasons.

I'm not part of any "religion", but I do think we should be getting off the oil.

All of that aside, don't you think there would be some published scientific material to prove your initial point, ie, that it is corrosive and damaging to metal. Or, that is, MORE corrosive/damaging than regular diesel is?

I've read a lot of material and found the OPPOSITE of your claim.

But then again, maybe the evil corporations paid for all those studies... ;D

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Yours Truly,

Special Agent

No offense intended, but I think I'll believe the guy who's done long haul testing on these engines over people who have owned them two years or less. My bet is that you will start seeing problems around the 15 year mark, as that is what their testing showed them. Metal is not magically immune to corrosive influence, although obviously it is more resistant to it than other materials. That said, what you should really worry about is your injectors, which will have problems with it sooner rather than later.

But if your only planning to run it for a few years, and trade it in on something newer, obviously you aren't going to have any more of an issue than your average car.

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2006 Jeep Liberty Sport CRD

I have many reasons to not be pro-Biofuel. I listed several in this thread because inevitably if you state only a single reason, people will find a way to minimize it. To put it simply, here is the condensed version:

1) It will wear out your engine faster. You don't have to believe this or not, but it will, and it specifically causes problems with the VM Motori CRD's. Delivering this information is just my attempt to do a service for the people who come to these forums with a question about whether or not it will harm their vehicle. I know the die-hards will not change their mind and I don't expect to convert you. I'd be doing a disservice however if I simply said nothing.

2) It is not an energy positive. There are multiple studies demonstrating this. I am not here to do your homework for you. Since people on this forum are not scientists, there is no real way for me to demonstrate why some studies are superior to others. And some people, such as DadsDiesel have explicitly mocked me simply for my apparant education level, so there isn't much point in providing this level of 'proof' to people who ridicule 'the educated'.

3) It is water intensive. Few people realize that the US is quickly approaching a water crisis. The largest source of water in the country is the Ogallala Aquifer(aka High Plains aka Great Plains). Water is being extracted from it at a rate of 80-100 times its rate of natural recharge. When it runs out(current estimates say in 40-60 years) the midwest will become a desert and this nation's agriculture industry will be finished. Increasing our agriculture burden with BioFuels will dramatically increase the rate of depletion of the aquifer. This is quite possibly the largest near-term disaster the US is facing, and its recieving very little press. More info on the Aquifer itself here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogallala_Aquifer

4) Due to #2 above, increased agriculture and the machinery needed to harvest actually increases our dependence on foreign oil imports. As we all know, we are busy getting killed overseas right now to defend our 'right' to cheap gas. This would make that situation worse.

5) It is not environmentally sound. Farming is extremely high impact environmentally, requiring the clearing of natural rain forests and the carbon sinks they provide(corn, soybeans, etc do not absorb nearly what old growth does). Furthermore, the runoff and ground contamination from farming is some of the worst pollution in the country due to the use of fertilizers, pesticides and other chemicals. To those who think we can farm without those things on the scale needed for biofuels, I have no idea what to say. The only reason farming is remotely as productive as it is today in the amount of land we utilize is because of our heavy use of genetic modification, herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers. If you remove those you make it even more impossible to ever be even energy neutral, much less energy surplus with the process. Furthermore it depletes the soil rapidly, the point of fertilizers is to eliminate the need for crop rotation, having to go back to that would remove 2/3 of our avialable farmland on any given year. More info on the impact of mass farming here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farming#En ... l_problems

6) It will not reduce global warming. The farm equipment needed puts of large amounts of CO2, the burned fuels still emit CO2, and the cropland does not absorb CO2 at nearly the rate of natural land. In fact even some varities of grass absorb more CO2 than corn or soy products. This means that by removing the natural carbon sinks that forests provide and replacing them with crops to grow biofuels you are actually defeating the purpose of switching in the first place. Brazil is a huge offender here, National Geographic's cover story last month was about their mass deforestation to plant sugar cane for ethanol. More information on deforestation and its environmental effects here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation#Brazil
European BioDiesel production deforesting southeast asia here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_oil#E ... ral_impact
Brazil's deforestation for ethanol here: http://www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/ ... index.html

Other reasons which I will not detail -

- It is not scalable as other nations come online due to the limited amount of available global farmland
- Even if all farm land was put into use today, less than 5% of just the US fuel needs would be covered
- It will raise all food prices due to land being used for biofuels that was being used for feedstock(already happening, info here: http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/02/11/ ... bxcorn.php )

I could go on and on. As I have stated before, there is hope on the horizon in the form of algae based BD( Info here: http://www.unh.edu/p2/biodiesel/article_alge.html ). But that is still a little ways off. In the meantime, yes, we are doing more damage than good by converting, and increasing the rates of global warming, destruction of the biosphere and depletion of drinkable water.

I hope this makes my position more clear. This is why you see lip service towards biofuels but little action. Those in the know are aware of these drawbacks, and they know that it cannot be done on a wide scale until they are overcome.

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2006 Jeep Liberty Sport CRD

Reflex - have you seen anything on the use of a higher oil producing crop like rape seed?

I hear exactly what your are saying and agree with a lot of it. I do agree 100% with you on corn and sugar cane based fuels. there is way too much water use and just too much acreage needed to produce the amount of product we would use.

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formaly 2005 CRD sport w/True Flow air filter

currently 2006 Dodge Ram Mega Cab 4X4 2500 CTD

Rape Seed is definatly a step in the right direction, at the least its about growing a crop based on its potential energy density rather than based on what seeds Monosato can sell to farmers. I do not know its overall energy balance however, and it still uses a ton of cropland without any real hope of replacing oil entirely. The info on it specifically is fairly light, but here is what Wikipedia comes up with: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_seed#Biodiesel

Slightly off topic, but here is the energy density of potential fuel products for the manufacture of Ethanol: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fu ... production
You'll note that corn is pretty much one of the worst stock we could be using for production. Even sugar cane is not very good. You'll note that the top two possibilities are varieties of grass, which yield as much as four times the amount of ethanol per acre, plus they grow with very little water and very little nutrients required. Unfortunatly there is not much money to be made in selling grass seed, and as a result they have not recieved the subsidies that instead are being plowed into something as useless as corn.

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2006 Jeep Liberty Sport CRD

I think people confuse "renewable eneregy source" as something with "no ecological impact". Almost everything that we use to make energy has an environmental impact. If home brewers use WVO (waste vegetable oil) to make biodiesel and reclaim the water and methanol as best they can (you can recover a large percentage of both and reuse), then the process is worthwhile IMHO. Then you can use this "biodiesel" in an older type Mercedes, ect and make a small impact on "oil resources". Once you try to take this to a commercially larger scale, you will find more drawbacks as "Reflex" has pointed out. Do not underestimate the "cost" of producing biodiesel on a larger scale. Reflex also mentioned the possible damage to injectors using biodiesel...funny that Bosch also does not approve any high concentration of Biodiesel (they say that B5 is the current maximum that they trust) for our CRD or any of thier newer systems.

What we really need to do is manage our current resources (on a worldwide basis) in a more responsible way to give us (humanity in general) more time to develop better methods to improve our situation. Taking food producing land and changing it to solely energy producing land will have negative effects in the short long run. Now with the Algae type Biodisel, if it is from water treatment plants and helps in the recovery of fresh water...that could be a good thing. The main thing to remember is that there needs to be a "balance" in our approach. Everything you do in this world has an effect on something else. We need to find solutions that have minimal detrimental effects on other ecosystems. Right NOW the biggest changes we can make is in our own habits. We just need to be a little less "lazy" (for lack of a better word) and use some common sense.

We need to take "politics" out of the equation and put "science" back in when it comes to fuel sources. The quick fixes such as using "corn" to make ethanol, are not the best solutions. If we were using corn products that were not replacing food products, then it would be viable but we are replacing food producing land use with fuel producing land use...that is counterproductive in the very short run. Cutting down oxygen producing forrests to produce more energy is obviously not a good choice. You are placing too high a cost to save a little bit of $$$ for energy. The biggest problem is that people have come to look for the easy way out without having to make any sacrifices along the way. The problem with that method is that we are making sacrifices that we are choosing to ignore. What we really need is a long term plan that involves other countries that will hold to a higher standard of solutions based on the "overall picture"...not a politically advancing solution that keeps players in office. We need to come up with solutions that take all aspect of producing and delivering engery to us into account.

Over Population is our biggest problem...we reproduce too many of ourselves

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Founder of L.O.S.T.
2006 CRD Sport
Mods: GDE Hot Tune w/ 364#@2000rpm/Air Box /3" Str8 Exhaust/ASFIR Alum Skids/245-75R-16 Cooper STT PRO/OME LIFT w/Clevis & 4 Spring Isos/AirTabs/Rigid 10" S2 LED/4xGuard Ctr Matrix Bumper
Drag Strip:Reac=.1078_60ft=2.224_1/8=10.39@64.8mph_1/4+16.46@80.8mph

Reflex,

Thank you for your in-depth reply.

Regarding eco-disasters, sometimes there are too many rabbits and the foxes flourish in response. That's just nature finding equilibrium. I don't lose sleep over it, I surely don't alter my purchasing habits because of it. We were supposed to have global famine, nuclear winter, a magnetic pole flip, flying cars, aliens on the White House lawn and a bunch of other problems that never surfaced, so forgive me if I'm glib. I'm still waiting for Peak Oil to really get going, but it never seems to hit... I just switched to Biodiesel because its is cheaper in the summer months.

As far as your education level goes, unless we have a mutual friend or you are willing to "go public" with your real name, diplomas, etc... I'll just treat you as a fellow CRD enthusiast and leave it at that. You see, everywhere I go online I meet a surprising number of highly-educated experts in various fields: Medical Doctors, Special Forces War Vets and cute, barely-legal 18-year-old girls who want me very badly. So if I just go by published studies and not internet experts or a friend's cousins' brother's anecdotes, forgive me.

What those studies tell me is that the pH of correctly-made Biodiesel is right around that of tap water, maybe my saliva.

It is a solvent and it will readily absorb other hydrocarbons, but this does not mean it absorbs metals. In fact, thanks to its hydrophobic (non-polar) nature, it reacts not at all to steel and other metals. Water and oxygen are a threat to metals, not methyl esters. Even the most dangerous chemical used to make biodiesel, sodium hydroxide, is inert to steel and iron.

The viscosity of Biodiesel is quite similar to that of diesel fuel, but in cold weather (as I mentioned) this rises until waxes form and THAT places a strain on the fuel supply system and thus the engine as a whole. However, this is not really an issue either once the vehicle is warmed up, and even diesel can gel in extreme cold. It clearly would not take years off the life of the vehicle.

Therefore, in consideration of your initial statements, I request that you explain by what scientific process the Biodiesel would harm the engine or shorten its lifespan. Acidity, reactivity, viscosity, improper combustion, gamma radiation, gremlins? I am especially interested to hear why biodiesel will harm VM motori engines moreso than other brands...

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Yours Truly,

Special Agent

Jez this is getting deep, but I must agree with Special Agent. Hey if you just go to Fred's TDI forum and/or the MB diesel forum you can find people who have used Bio fuels for years, then do some number crunching and interviews from the real world and see what shakes out.

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91 MB 300D 2.5L Turbo. Her's

05 MB E320 CDI. Mine

Oldnavy -- aren't there some early model (mid to late 90s) Passat TDIs on TDIclub with nearly 300k miles -- many of them done on B99/B100?

My whole point to this debate is that the VW 1.9 liter TDI motor seems to handle biodiesel extremely well from many owner experiences on TDIclub. Given that this is the case, I doubt that the VM 2.8 CRD motor would be weaker than the TDI motor when biofuels were used, unless the VM engine has a specific design weakness for biofuels -- which has yet to be proven.

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The folks: 2006 Liberty CRD Limited, Lt. Khaki (picked up 7/21/06 w/ 300 miles). Rotella 5W-40.

And: 1995 Grand Cherokee 4.0 Laredo, Silver, Selec-Trac, custom free-flow exhaust by local shop.

Me: 1998 Subaru Outback AWD, 2.5 DOHC, 5-speed manual. Nearly 170k miles & runs awesome.

Just picking nits here, and have a quick correction- Most people are using Potassium Hydroxide (KOH) for their catalyst these days rather than Sodium Hydroxide (NaOH), as it is much easier to work with, process-wise. The rest of your post is spot-on, though.

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2006 Liberty Sport CRD

Yup one or two are personal friends. One has about 350,000 miles on home brew and WVO when he had to replace a fuel pump due to water contamination while running standard D2 last winter on a trip. He was PO to say the least, since he had just had a head off to repair damage from broken TB that led him to remove the GP's and while doing that had one break. I had a lot of phone calls durring that long drawn out repair. It was almost comical.

I do have another friend with a beautiful old Passat TDI that has been using BioD for about 4 years now, and has been driving the car 170+ miles a day to work and back and has never had a problem. I think he is approaching 300k miles and has never had the head off, runs a Stage II Rocket chip.

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91 MB 300D 2.5L Turbo. Her's

05 MB E320 CDI. Mine

Actually isnt it the other things inside water? Are there not boats sunken in cold booty water that are like 300 years old and perfect looking?
-c

Only if water is cold enough and depending on type of metals, but even that doesn't stop the process. Check out the Titanic and the way it is slowly disappearing.

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91 MB 300D 2.5L Turbo. Her's

05 MB E320 CDI. Mine

It is actually the type a organisms present. The HMS Titanic is going away rapidly in ice water, but the HMS Lusitania (spelled wrong) her sister ship that was sunk by a Gerry mine in the Med is still pretty much all there.

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2006 Sport CRD

Could the Aztecs have known, that in 2012 after a 4 year experiment, our country would cease to exist?