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is saving $1 per gallon of fuel worth this?

colbystephens

colbystephens

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so Gobiodiesel - portland's biodiesel coop - is selling their fuel for $1.99. to purchase this fuel i would need to buy into their group (one time membership fee of $100) and then volunteer at the coop every so often. seems like a great deal to me. i want to make it on my own, but that's a ton of work. anyway, i will have made my $100 fee back after buying 100 gallons of fuel, assuming that while i'm buying biodiesel for $2/gallon, petro diesel maintains an expense of at least $1 more per gallon. what do you think? am i processing the advantages/disadvantages right?
 
The economics seem worth it when you are comparing the savings per gallon versus a one time up front fee. It is the whole "volunteer once in a while at the coop" part that might throw the savings out of whack. What kind of time requirement is involved? Hard manual labor, or sitting on your ass watching a computer screen? Those are the kind of things that might make it not worth doing.
 
i don't know what the requirements for volunteering are - the info meeting is every first tuesday of the month, and so i'm going to have to wait about 30 days before i can find out. i think it's like a once or twice a month type thing, and i would imagine it's just making the fuel, which is a slow, nearly no-labor process. alot of sitting around and waiting for chemicals and whatnot to mix.
 
The Butcher said:
What kind of time requirement is involved? Hard manual labor, or sitting on your ass watching a computer screen? Those are the kind of things that might make it not worth doing.
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And how much is your time worth?

I would assume that the more people involved the less time each individual has to spend helping, (so potentially less involvement as time goes on) but thats communism and we know how well that worked out on a huge scale. :)
 
there are kits out there for $600-$800 that is a new tank with a heater in it... all wiring and you put this tank in your vehicle in addition to your original tank....

if you have a resource for cooking oil as I do.... (I dont own a diesel :doah: )

tap this tank in and you startup using diesel.. once the tank is warm to un-gel the strained cooking oil a light will come on and you push a button. Once a button is pushed it will switch over to cooking oil..... once you get where you are going just switch back to diesel and allow cooking oil to purge from the system (another built it piece of the kit)

this way if you have a oil source.. you can strain it yourself and free fuel (other than the kit) but you will make your $$$ back in no time...

im debating on buying a diesel pickup... for me I dont do that as a dd as my current dd gets 23mpg and a diesel crewcab dd would get what... 8-12mpg???

I have a source for the free cooking oil as a bud works for a school district and they pay someone to take it.....

this is just an option.. if anyone wants any links to some of this I can ask my bud.....
 
yeah, i'm familiar w/ the different ways to run the veggie oil - straight or biodiesel or biomix - that's not my concern. i could make a set up for heating my take for about $100, but i'm not interested in dealing with all of that. biodiesel can be made for 50 cents/gallon if you do it all yourself, which i'm still considering doing - it's just a ton of work.
 
I own 4 diesel powered GM trucks and if they had something like this around me I think I would have to try it.

Mark
 
i bet they do - there's websites available where you can figure out how to drive across the states running just biofuel. however, to buy biodiesel from the regular pump is more costly than regular diesel - go figure.
 
do a search for envrofuel (i think I spelled it right) he's local to corvallis here and has done tons of conversions.
 
Sounds good to me....I would do it. 100 gallons can be gone through mighty quickly...especially when wheeling.
-Harrison
 
Dont forget- if you go your own route, you have to collect and process your own veggie oil. Thats the real difference. Not to mention real-estate size.
 
RootBreaker said:
im debating on buying a diesel pickup... for me I dont do that as a dd as my current dd gets 23mpg and a diesel crewcab dd would get what... 8-12mpg???

I have a source for the free cooking oil as a bud works for a school district and they pay someone to take it.....

this is just an option.. if anyone wants any links to some of this I can ask my bud.....
Click to expand...

Just so you know I get 12 mpg in town and 14 to 18 mpg on the highway with my Crew cab long bed Powerstroke, but I have 4.11 gears. Guys I know with the same truck and 3.55 gears get an honest 20 to 22 mpg on the highway and around 15 in town. From what I have heard the 6.2 and 6.5 GMC diesels actually get better MPG than that. Plus the fuel is free if you run the waste vegetable oil!
 
Pookster said:
Dont forget- if you go your own route, you have to collect and process your own veggie oil. Thats the real difference. Not to mention real-estate size.
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i'm well aware of that. ;)
 
I saw a suburban on ebay a while ago that had the heater setup and all, I think(but can't remember) it used the engine coolant to heat the wvo. He would start the engine on diesel fuel, then after 5-10 minutes, he'd switch to 100% WVO. I wish I knew/ kept the details.
 
you mean something like this?

colbystephens said:
i thought that it would be cool to have a real small tank in my blazer - maybe 5 gallons, mounted behind the wheel well where i would have my diesel to start the truck on. then i would take copper tubing and run it around the outside of the fuel tank, and then get a bunch of insulation to spray on the outside of the tank to force the heat to go into the fuel tank. i'd run this "tank radiator" in series with the cooling system - so as the hot fluid came out of the engine it would run around the fuel tank and then back and into the radiator before going back into the engine. i'd put a thermometer into the veggie oil fuel tank and watch for the proper temp where it would be the proper viscosity to run in my engine, then switch from running petro diesel to the veggie oil, and then switch back to the petro a few minutes before shutting it down to purge the lines of veggie oil which might coagulate in the lines at colder temps. :D fun fun.
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too much hassle for me.
 
colbystephens said:
so Gobiodiesel - portland's biodiesel coop - is selling their fuel for $1.99. to purchase this fuel i would need to buy into their group (one time membership fee of $100) and then volunteer at the coop every so often. seems like a great deal to me. i want to make it on my own, but that's a ton of work. anyway, i will have made my $100 fee back after buying 100 gallons of fuel, assuming that while i'm buying biodiesel for $2/gallon, petro diesel maintains an expense of at least $1 more per gallon. what do you think? am i processing the advantages/disadvantages right?
Click to expand...

what percentage of biodiesel are they selling? B100? B20? B5? That's going to have an impact on the ultimate mileage you get.

Tom
 
Work to make money, work to save money, sort of the same thing. Plus, it just sounds cool to make your own fuel. I'd do it.
 
About the whole "go o a restaurant and get there used oil" It dont work like that. the oil is considered hazardous waste and must be dissposed of through a liscenced company. Also all oil has to be documented when it has left the restaurant. Thats at least the way it works in ct:rolleyes:
 
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