offgriddave
Solar Enthusiast
- Joined
- Feb 14, 2020
- Messages
- 225
Yup... very much possible. Next question is HOW MUCH biodiesel do you want to make? 10 gallons a week, 500 gallons a week? A one time thing of 20 gallons for emergency?
100 gallons a year? Enough to go to town and back once a month to sell at the farmer's market (2 gallons) and run my tractor (ethanol) and excavator for 100 hours (60 gallons) at a minimum, although I'd love to run my excavator a lot because there's ore up here on the mountain.
I've got a chrome mine 1500 ft away, 1 mile north a gold/silver mine, and 1 mile south a nickle mine. All abandoned claims from the 1930s, back when they used pix axes and shovels.
It makes a difference in how you invest in the equipment..
DO NOT mix used engine oil into it and DO NOT burn engine oil in your diesel engine.. that's a great way to destroy it. You could burn hydraulic oil in your engine and various other oils, but never engine oil. Crankcase oils have dissolved metals in them, when burned, those dissolved ions will come out of solution and condense on the first cold surface they find.. cold being relative here = valves and valve seats. And you can not simply use a mechanical filter to remove them any more than you can remove salt from water. Bad juju.. don't do it.
Yeah, I had an old 1965 Case 530CK and ran transmission fluid in it no problem. I accidentally mixed it in with red dye diesel and poured it in. Ran great. I wouldn't do this with my truck or excavator
In a total SHTF event, diesel fuel is easy to find.. there's 20 gallons of it in every electrical pole transformer and hundreds of gallons in the big base transformers with cooling fins. It's actually mineral oil, but it runs fine in any diesel engine.. Only thing to watch out for is that it lacks lubricity, so its a good thing to mix in some regular diesel, hydraulic oil, or even biodiesel with it.
Nice, but not really an option
Making quality biodiesel (that won't clog up your injectors) is a function of the quality of the transesterification process. If you get your titrations correct, and your biodiesel processor is capable of the correct heat and mixing parameters (simple stuff), then you'll get good fuel that will pass an ASTM test.
Your old 5.9 will probably run sludge and still work, but if you have a common rail system, then you better darn well make high quality fuel or you'll have problems.
So this probably isn't a realistic option? It's a 2004 dodge 3500 dually. Wish I had something pre-electronic with a Detroit diesel. That'd burn anything.
As for lighting.. Honestly, rechargeable batteries and a small solar panel are your best bet by far. But if you really want that flame, then you can use biodiesel, you just need to change the wick.
Don't think any of this is going to work post EMP but got that covered. I buy 18650 flashlights by the dozen every year because keep losing them. If I check under the bed, couch, and behind the cabinets I usually find dozens of them. I have I think 300-400 18650 from a failed Powerwall project.
Your statements about coal are a bit confusing. Coal, like the stuff we run power plants on, is not the same as Charcoal, which is what comes from wood. I'm a bit confused when you shorten charcoal into just coal..
I screwed up, I meant charcoal. Can I use charcoal to make lye and other chemicals?
Also, if you need methanol, every automobile dealer will have 55 gallon drums of the stuff sitting in their service bay.. It will be labeled "Concentrated Windshield Washer Fluid", and is somewhere between 75% and 90% pure methanol.. But beware, it still needs refining as the other 10 to 20 percent is water and water will screw up a biodiesel process very quickly. It will burn nicely however and will work great in an alcohol stove, but be careful, it burns with a nearly invisible flame.
I have an old coffee percolator that's basically it for distilling.
Wood ash can be used to make potassium hydroxide, which can then be used to make soap.. but it would be a crap poor substitute for actual KOH flakes and would most likely cause more problems than it solves.
Any way to purify it? I have an electric water purifier. Could also be used for distilling or for getting particulates.
You can also make methanol from wood.. (which is why its sometimes referred to as wood alcohol), but it needs to be distilled to purify it before using it to make biodiesel.
How do I do this? Distill wood smoke? From a bong?
Making biodiesel is easy.. making the raw chemicals to make biodiesel = not so much. There's a BIG leap between those two.
Wish I kept my Case 530CK it'd run on this. It had a rotary based injector pump instead of inline.
One thing I know you trust the science, so I have this book CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics 84th edition I think 2002? It's your kind of bible.
I figure from this I can (deep breath, ... eventually) figure out everything I need
EDIT: Unfortunately "transesterification" is not in the CRC handbook
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