BioDiesel for all

Biodiesel is not necessarily that new of a phenomenon. It has been in the spotlight lately because of rising diesel fuel prices and its potential to become a substitute for fuels that produce a lot of soot and carbons. These poisonous elements, which are, associated with regular diesel fuel emissions (especially buses.) However biodiesel has been around for decades as a supplement that is added to conventional diesel fuel to improve the lubricity of diesel engines.

The bottom line is that biodiesel lubricates your machinery far better than petroleum diesel fuel. Scientist and farmers have realized for years marked improvement in lubricity when biodiesel is added to conventional diesel fuel. Even biodiesel levels as low as one percent can provide up to a 65 percent increase in lubricity in distillate fuels.

To refresh your memory, pure biodiesel is referred to as B100 or 'neat' biodiesel. A biodiesel blend is pure biodiesel blended with petrodiesel. Biodiesel blends are referred to as Bxx. The xx indicates the amount of biodiesel in the blend (for example a B20 blend is 20 percent by volume biodiesel and 80 percent by volume petrodiesel.)

The smoothness and mobility of diesel fuel is especially important for diesel engines and machines that use rotary and distributor type fuel injection pumps. In these pumps, the fuel itself lubricates moving parts as it moves through the pump. This is where biodiesel can greatly increase the efficiency of a machine.

The efficiency of other diesel fuel systems-which include unit injectors, injectors, unit pumps, and in-line pumps also rely on well-lubricated diesel fuel. The reason that biodiesel fuel in blends of 20% or lower are usually added to regular diesel fuels is because Biodiesel fuels consisting of methyl esters of soybean oil. The esters in biodiesel have superior scuffing and adhesive wear resistance that exceeds conventional diesel fuels.

If you are unsure whether or not biodiesel or blended biodiesel will degrade the vinyls, rubbers or metals in your machinery it is, the engine or vehicle manufacturer should be contacted to determine if the seals, hoses, and gaskets are compatible with the biodiesel blend before use.

To ensure the safest use of biodiesel fuel, make sure that it meets the ASTM specification for pure biodiesel (ASTM D 6751) before blending with petroleum based diesel fuel. The specification for biodiesel is designed to ensure that consumers will not experience operational problems (especially accidents!) from the fuel's use. Make sure that the merchant who sells you this biodiesel can provide you with written assurance that the biodiesel meets this specification.

Ash Ried is the author of numerous guides and articles on Biodiesel.
You can find articles on How To Make And Use Biodiesel on his website.
Click here to get free access http://NewBiodiesel.com/articles.html

You don't need a really fancy biodiesel processor to make your own high quality diesel fuel. There are many factors that dictate the quality of final quality of homemade biodiesel fuel but one of the most important considerations is the quality of the oil. If your oil is good then a second hand blender could be the best biodiesel processer you own.

It is the quality of the oil that you put in your biodiesel processor that is the most important. The best way to save
yourself a lot of headaches is to try and choose clean sources of waste oil in the first place. For one thing, contaminated oil is a lot harder to filter. It can contain too much water, food debris, salt or other contaminates.

Your first step will be to find a good source of relatively clean oil as well as something to store it in. The most common sources of free vegetable oil are restaurants (MacDonald's, KFC or similar fast food outlets), chip making companies (both French fry and commercial companies) and distributors of 'dregs.' (low quality oil.)

It is probably easiest to get your waste oil from a restaurant but it is also the dirtiest oil in terms of how much you will probably end up having to filter it before you can put it in your biodiesel processor However, waste oil from restaurants is plentiful and one restaurant can produce anywhere from 5 to over 50 gallons a week. This type of windfall of quality oil could put you in the business of selling your own homemade biodiesel fuel!

Snack food are also companies are copious producers of waste oil.

Although the oil has been used for cooking potatoes, pretzels and other treats it is often far cleaner and of a higher quality than the oil that is disposed of by restaurants. There are many smaller snack food, chip companies that are willing to give away oil in U.S. and Canada. By hauling away their oil for them, you are saving them the expense of doing it themselves. However you will have to devise some kind of process to remove particulates and food particles from the oil before putting it in a biodiesel processer.

Sometimes large manufacturers of vegetable oil may have stuff that is slightly contaminated. The manufacturer may have produced a low quality batch of oil that it simply cannot sell because it does not meet the company's quality standards. This is perfect to use in your biodiesel processor. Sometimes these companies give this oil for free however those days are probably going to be soon over as more and more companies recognize the need and value of the oil when it comes to biodiesel production.

This type of oil is preferred for blending in your biodiesel processor, as usually it requires limited filtering and processing. It has not been used for cooking which makes it cleaner than other sources.

Ash Ried is the author of numerous guides and articles on Biodiesel.
You can find articles on How To Make And Use Biodiesel on his website.
Click here to get free access http://NewBiodiesel.com/articles.html

Pure Biofuels announced the increase of capacity at its primary Callao Port facility, built on a 47,000-square-meter parcel of waterfront land near the capital city of Lima, Peru. With three 17.5 million gallon per year modules, the facility is set to produce an annual capacity of 52.5 million gallons of biodiesel. The Callao plant is situated in close proximity to the La Pampilla Refinery which is one of Peru’s biggest oil refineries.

The Callao Port refinery of the company will process biodiesel from crude palm oil feedstock. The company has already secured memorandums of understanding with local fuel distributors for all of Callao Port's annual biodiesel production.

Luis Goyzueta, the Pure Biofuels’ president, earlier provided the names of the construction company that will be building the refinery as well as the engineering firm designing the facility. Polindustria, a veteran Peruvian engineering firm, is chosen as the General Contractor. Consequently, Capricorn Chemical Engineering SA, popularly known as Capricorn, will be providing Pure Biofuels basic engineering, instrumentation, control schematics, and process flow design. The two companies are famous in infrastructure projects that Pure Biofuels is planning.

"We are extremely pleased with the team we have pulled together for our primary facility and we're very confident in our plans to establish Pure Biofuels as one of South America's true leaders in alternative energy production," said Goyzueta. "With a 50 million gallon per year facility, Pure Biofuels can make a significant impact on the amount of diesel fuel used in Peru, and, more importantly, we can help contribute to the energy independence of all of South America."

At present, automakers are aimed at discovering and producing biofuels, renewable energy sources derived from biomass, to replace oil and natural gas. The studies also focus on the use of cheap organic matter like sewage and agricultural wastes as well as cellulose. These organic matters efficiently produce gas and liquid biofuels that give off high net energy gain.

Biodiesel is basically derived from vegetable oil. It can be utilized by unmodified diesel engines. Biodiesel improves the overall performance of engines. It is a hundred percent compatible with today’s diesel vehicles and infrastructure. Aside from this, biodiesel is also proven reliable in over fifty million miles of road testing.

Biodiesel complements Borla and other exhaust system. Biodiesel is famed for its ability to reduce harmful exhaust emissions that contribute significantly to global warming. This biofuel is the first and only fuel to have passed the Clean Air Act. By 2025, the United Nations expects biofuels to account for 25 percent of world energy needs.

Biodiesel and biofuel production is growing at an exponentially increasing rate as new test-bed plants and full production facilities are being approved every month across Europe, Asia, and the Americas.

At present, biofuel production is considered experimental, and compared with other fuel production techniques, the total output is still very low. Feedstock supply lines are therefore quite limited, either being sourced from widely distributed waste products of other industries, or from niche crops like canola, a relatively new rapeseed cultivar. This creates a problem for both major and minor biodiesel producers, who have the daunting task of producing homogeneous, high quality fuel sourced from feedstock of varying and ultimately unknown purity and content. The market has responded to the demands of these new industries to supply quality assurance biodiesel testing equipment for every production scale.

Given the climbing public awareness of global warming and strains on global energy output, governments and corporations around the world are fronting the expense of rebates, research grants, and tax breaks for operators in industries which work towards reducing greenhouse gas emissions, making the concept of small, high-tech niche-industry start-ups economically viable. This has attracted big investment dollars in Brazil, the United States, and some members of the EU - most notable among these being Germany, where there are dozens of medium and large-scale alternative energy generation plants.

Biodiesel is defined as a diesel equivalent produced via transesterification of common fats and oils. There are three main avenues of supply of feedstock to biodiesel production plants. The first of these is dedicated crops grown specifically for their organic oils. Examples of these include soy beans, canola (rapeseed), oil palms, and algae. Canola and soy accounts for most of the total biodiesel production feedstock for the world, as it can be grown with conventional farming techniques, with predictable results.

The crop with the potential to produce the most oil is actually a species of algae, Botryococcus braunii, however, there remain serious doubts about its viability as a crop. Medium scale ventures prefer the waste by-products of other farming methods. The woody part of corn plants, left over wood pulp, and other biomass materials can be used as a substrate for biodiesel or ethanol producing bacteria. This supply is desirable for medium-scale producers as it results from otherwise less valuable by-products that can be obtained in reasonably large quantities.

Small-scale and hobbyist biodiesel producers are most likely to make use of waste vegetable oils and animal fats from cooking and commercial food production, as these are ubiquitous, but usually available only in smaller quantities, and hobby users are not likely to need any more raw feedstock than is necessary for a tank of fuel in their car every week. Furthermore, it is impractical for larger producers to collect kitchen waste in the same way an individual can, at least until demand grows enough for such infrastructure to be built.

Large scale producers have ongoing testing requirements for samples from billions of gallons biofuel every year. Due to the experimental nature of the industry, initial investment for such projects is quite expensive, however, due to the mostly uniform content of the feedstock crops used, large biodiesel production plants have run fairly reliably once established. For big biodiesel, the emphasis is on quality assurance: There are stringent requirements put on producers to keep levels of pollutants and various contaminants under tight control. Areas tested can include alcohol content, ester content, sulfur, heavy metal, and water quotas.

Additionally, biodiesel must exhibit certain physical characteristics like viscosity and flashpoint temperature. Small and medium scale producers have slightly different challenges to overcome, as they often do not sell their product, but rather, use it internally to power on-site farming machinery, or in the case of a hobbyist, the family sedan. The challenge here is not in producing product that meets stringent sales requirements (although it is desirable), but rather, ensuring that the higher number of relatively small batches are safe and uniform, so as not to produce content that damages the engines of machinery and equipment.

While this work can be done in-house, it is far more economically viable for producers to contract out as possible. Larger testing enterprises usually have of at least one HPLC (High Pressure Liquid Chromatography) machine or Gas Chromatograph, which are available for less than US$20,000, as well as all the appropriate glassware and apparatus to conduct titrations and other analytic procedures. At the hobby end of the market are self-contained biodiesel reaction vessel kits available for less than $500, and biodiesel testing kits for testing small quantities of product which can be sourced for less than $50.

With the growing public concern over the excess of atmospheric carbon, world peak oil production, and alternative energy solutions, biodiesel is beginning to look like an increasingly appealing stepping stone in between petroleum products and a completely clean implementation of energy storage, like hydrogen. Biodiesel testing requirements factor into the equation for small, mediumComputer Technology Articles, and large scale producers to ensure a supply of quality product.

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With growing environmental concern of burning fossil fuels, biodiesel is a stepping stone for an alternative energy source. To ensure a high quality biodiesel fuel source, biodiesel testing kits are available from Midwest Laboratories. http://store.midwestlabs.com/

Biofuels are hot. But how hot? Here are "just the facts." But first, what are biofuels? These are fuels derived from plants or animal fat that can replace such familiar oil-based transportation fuels as gasoline or diesel.

Ethanol can be distilled from corn, sugarcane or even straw and other cellulosic plant materials such as wood chips or grasses. Biodiesel is produced from vegetable oil crops such as palm, soybeans or rapeseed, or animal fats and leftover restaurant grease.

High oil prices, technological advances, concerns about energy security and the environment, and efforts to revitalize rural economies have all intersected to drive the biofuels boom. Ethanol has been used as a gasoline additive or stand-alone fuel in the United States and Brazil since the 1970s, but in recent years there has been an explosion of interest, resulting in substantial investment and steeply increased production.

Biodiesel is relatively new in the U.S., but has attracted strong interest and investment as well. There are 113 ethanol plants producing today in the U.S., with a capacity of 5.6 billion gallons per year or 365,000 barrels per day (bd).

Another 84 ethanol plants are either under construction or expanding, which could add another 6.1 billion gallons of annual production capacity (400,000 bd) in the next few years. A barrel of ethanol contains 3.54 million British Thermal Units (BTUs) of energy, while a barrel of gasoline contains 5.25 million BTUs. This means that a gallon of ethanol only provides about 70 percent of the energy that one gets from a gallon of gasoline. A state-of-the-art ethanol plant today can convert a bushel of corn into about 2.8 gallons of fuel ethanol. Two decades ago, this figure was closer to 2 gallons.

n the United States, blenders of ethanol receive a 51 cent-per gallon tax credit for every gallon of ethanol used in gasoline; for biodiesel, the equivalent credit is $1.00 per gallon. In 1980, the U.S. consumed a grand total of 11,000 barrels of ethanol per day. By early 2007, that demand had reached about 400,000 barrels per day, or over four percent of the total gasoline market by volume.

Current federal legislation requires 7.5 billion gallons (490,000 bd) of biofuel use by 2012. The Bush administration recently proposed a target of 35 billion gallons (2.3 million bd) of renewable and alternative fuels by 2017-a goal that would likely require major advances in cellulosic ethanol technology.

In 2006, the ethanol sector consumed nearly 2.2 billion bushels of corn-about 20 percent of the total U.S. harvest of 10.7 billion bushels. Ethanol can be produced from non-food crops, such as switchgrass and straw. But this approach can't yet compete in the marketplace. There is currently intense interest in making this process-"cellulosic ethanol"-commercially viable.

The US biodiesel industry is much smaller than the ethanol industry. Current annual production is estimated at 250 million gallons (16,000 bd), although it is growing quickly. Europe is currently the world leader in biodiesel production and use. Annual production is currently over 1.5 billion gallons (100,000 bd) with substantial new capacity under construction.

The National Biodiesel board, or the NBB as it is widely known, is the trade association that represents the Biodiesel industry as the body that coordinates the research and development of the industry in the US. During the early 1990s, the state commodity groups were giving the financial support to the research and development series for the biodiesel development. The NBB was then founded during the year 1992 by the same group and has since then grown up as a wide-ranging industry association. It main functions are the bringing together and communicating with the vast range of cooperators that include business, administration and academic world.

The members of this board are the technology providers, fuel marketers and distributors, biodiesel suppliers, the state, national, and international feedstock and feedstock processor organizations. While starting the association, the board of members had recommended a mission of the association. The mission states that the primary objective of the board is the progress the significance of members by making a substantial growth in the biodiesel industry. The expansion of industry can be achieved through excellent guarantee agenda, proper technicalities, extensive communication and public affairs. The board has dedicated itself to comprehensiveness and reliability.

The board has devised an agenda that makes sure that by 2015, the biodiesel industry will be known as one of the most important aspects of the energy policy of the nation that depends upon the renewable fuels which are clean and harmless to use. The market for the biodiesel by then will be stabilized with the help of the positive marketing. The board, with the help of efficient advisors has also projected that, by the year 2015, around 6% of the demand of diesel will be substituted by the biodiesel or the large number of blends of the biodiesel.

Around the year 1993 and 1994, the NBB or the National Biodiesel Board formed a subdivision known as the National Biodiesel Foundation or the NBF. Its primary task was to carry out numerous activities in fields of literature, science and education. It also consisted of the research and development of the uses of fuels and other goods that are obtained from the soybeans. The basic goal of the foundation is to acquire funds from outside the biodiesel industry and to enhance the funding of the development plants of the biodiesel.

The NBB has been up-to the mark till date as can be seen by the website of the board. The website, on its homepage provides us with the information of biodiesel as well as the current news that is associated with the biodiesel industry. The most important aspect of the website is that, it has provided direct links to the most frequently requested information about the industry as well as the fuel. This helps the new enthusiasts who want to join the industry.

The website also provides us with a direct search link on the top of the website so that you may search any information that you want. The website also provides you with direct links with the market segments and the site index which facilitates you to choose which ever topic you want. There is also a ‘members only’ area on the homepage.

About the Author:
Muna wa Wanjiru Has Been Researching and Reporting on Biodiesel for Years. For More Information on National Biodiesel Board, Visit His Site at NATIONAL BIODIESEL BOARD

Biodiesel is an inexpensive, environmentally friendly source of energy. These benefits have sparked the public's interest in using this to fuel their cars. This increased interest has motivated many new companies and hobbyists to become producers and sellers of this new fuel.

As with any other product, producers and sellers must meet certain regulations and, in addition, are encouraged to follow suggested guidelines.

Regulations concerning the production and selling of biodiesel greatly varies from State to State. While many states do not possess explicit regulations or laws governing the production and sale of biodiesel, other states do have such regulations or laws as well as legal definitions of what qualifies.

When a state possesses an explicit legal definition of what constitutes a biodiesel fuel it usually includes one or more of the specifications, such as the D6751 specification, provided by the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM).

The State of Michigan is perhaps one of the most stringent States in that it prohibits refiners, distributors and retailers from transferring or dispensing biodiesel containing visible "undissolved water, sediments and other suspended matter". Furthermore, Michigan retailers cannot sell from storage tanks that contain 2 inches or more of water, or a mixture of water and alcohol, at the bottom of the tank.

A comprehensive discussion of the laws and regulations governing the production, storage and selling is beyond the scope of this article. Readers interested in such laws, pertaining to one or more specific States, are referred to the webpage for the US Department of Energy.

The laws and regulations of Michigan illustrate the importance of fuel testing by any company wishing to produce, distribute and/or sell on a national scale any fuel derived from agricultural products.

National producers, distributors and retailers in this industry may also be further motivated to implement a comprehensive testing program in order to become certified as a BQ-9000 producer or marketer by the National Biodiesel Accreditation Commission (NBAC). Central to the BQ-9000 certification process is full compliance with the ASTM D6751 specification for B100 (i.e., a fuel mixture composed of 100% biodiesel) blend stock for middle distillate fuels.

The ASTM D6751 places limits on a number of the properties of biodiesel fuel. Limits are placed upon the combined mass concentration of calcium and magnesium, the closed cup flashpoint, the combined volume concentration of water and sediment and many more properties.

Biodiesel testing of the properties listed within ASTM D6751-07b is an important step in meeting the legal regulations and legal definition of biodiesel put forth by many States as well as helping to meet a major criterion of the BQ-9000 certification process.

Perhaps most importantly by ensuring that these alternative fuels meet the standards of the ASTM D6751 a producer, distributor or retailer can guarantee their customers a quality fuel. In turn, the producer, distributor or retailer will increase their likelihood in remaining competitive in an industry having a bright future.

For biodiesel fuel testing, Midwest Laboratories offers kits in accordance with ASTM 6751 for B100 Biodiesel. Midwest Labs develops testing packages specific for clients' needs meeting the requirements set by industry standards. Visit http://store.midwestlabs.com/Biodiesel_Testing/