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Driving on red diesel

Driving on red diesel

Old Nov 13th 2011, 10:42 pm
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Default Re: Driving on red diesel

Originally Posted by cognitivLib
You might want to have a cover story.. perhaps load several bags of menure into the van, and dress like farmer.

I have no idea about the rules on transporting dangerous materials, but it would be silly to treat diesel with with as much caution as gasoline or alcohol. It would be like buying cooking oil from the grocery store in bulk. If you drop a lit match in bucket bio-diesel, it will put the match out.. and probably the same for petroleum diesel.
I believe you can do that with petrol as well - its the fumes that ignite not the fuel itself although petrol has a lower flame point than diesel.

It doesnt matter what you want to call it, it is classified as a Dangerous Goods iaw the necessary acts.
The maritime authorities get quite sniffy about such matters for some reason.
In the same way as insurance co's do if they find out a super tank has been fitted, especially if they havent been told beforehand.
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Old Nov 14th 2011, 4:28 am
  #17  
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Default Re: Driving on red diesel

Originally Posted by Domino
I believe you can do that with petrol as well - its the fumes that ignite not the fuel itself although petrol has a lower flame point than diesel.

It doesnt matter what you want to call it, it is classified as a Dangerous Goods iaw the necessary acts.
The maritime authorities get quite sniffy about such matters for some reason.
In the same way as insurance co's do if they find out a super tank has been fitted, especially if they havent been told beforehand.
.
Hi,
I believe you can do that with petrol as well - its the fumes that ignite not the fuel itself although petrol has a lower flame point than diesel.

OK, here's the acid test,,,,

I throw my lighted match into my full bucket of diesel.
You throw your lighted match in to your full bucket of petrol,,,,,,, when I am well far, far away.

vette
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Old Nov 14th 2011, 8:13 am
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Default Re: Driving on red diesel

Originally Posted by uk_vette
.
Hi,
I believe you can do that with petrol as well - its the fumes that ignite not the fuel itself although petrol has a lower flame point than diesel.

OK, here's the acid test,,,,

I throw my lighted match into my full bucket of diesel.
You throw your lighted match in to your full bucket of petrol,,,,,,, when I am well far, far away.

vette
so you would be away from the fumes then ..... thats a cunning ploy
you know full well in that experiment what would happen as I do

I suppose you will be telling me I cannot put an oil fire out with water
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Old Nov 14th 2011, 12:52 pm
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Default Re: Driving on red diesel

Rather than red diesel have you tried vegetable oil? Clean obviously not left overs from your deep fat fryer.

It's cold now making veggie gloopy & difficult to start (as I found to my peril) but mixing half a tank of veggie with half a tank of diesel should be ok.

For those sceptics amongst you, next time you fill up with diesel, add 1 litre of veggie to it & you see you notice any difference, afterall the diesel engine was originally designed to run of peanut oil.
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Old Nov 14th 2011, 4:33 pm
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Default Re: Driving on red diesel

Originally Posted by licinius
Rather than red diesel have you tried vegetable oil? Clean obviously not left overs from your deep fat fryer.

It's cold now making veggie gloopy & difficult to start (as I found to my peril) but mixing half a tank of veggie with half a tank of diesel should be ok.

For those sceptics amongst you, next time you fill up with diesel, add 1 litre of veggie to it & you see you notice any difference, afterall the diesel engine was originally designed to run of peanut oil.
I wouldn't do that if it's a young engine that you care about. I say that based on what I know about grease cars..

A grease car can run on 100% veggie oil, because it's modified with bigger pipes and injectors, which are heated to make the oil less-viscous. Grease cars are the absolute cheapest to operate. You can burn waste oil (generally free) in them after simply filtering through mesh wire. But the downside is because they're so dirty, the engine generally must be rebuilt every 100k miles. The exhaust smells like McDonalds. It eventually gets gummed up with glycerin or the like.

That said, I would expect a veggie oil mix to shorten the life of an unmodified engine for the same reason. It's dirty. Also, glycerin also builds up in the fuel tank, which slowly shrinks the fuel capacity.

Out of curiosity, do grease cars exist in Europe? Would they get past the annual controls?
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Old Nov 14th 2011, 5:06 pm
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Default Re: Driving on red diesel

Dirty????????? There's nothing dirtier than diesel! I ran my transit on veggie for years & there was not one bit of smoke came out of the exhaust (apart from the lesson I learned in cold weather). When it came to the MOT the tester even had to check his computer was working because of the zero readout & finally no it doesn't smell like McDonalds (proof that you're speculating) it actually smells like doughnuts.
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Old Nov 14th 2011, 5:13 pm
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Default Re: Driving on red diesel

Originally Posted by licinius
Dirty????????? There's nothing dirtier than diesel! I ran my transit on veggie for years & there was not one bit of smoke came out of the exhaust (apart from the lesson I learned in cold weather). When it came to the MOT the tester even had to check his computer was working because of the zero readout & finally no it doesn't smell like McDonalds (proof that you're speculating) it actually smells like doughnuts.
you may have the local cats and dogs following you around if you are using oil from the fish and chip shop


actually even that isnt true as a tele prog last year looked into that and if it is filtered etc the way it should be then it will not smell of the products cooked in it. Just can't remember if it was dunkin donuts or not.
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Old Nov 14th 2011, 6:59 pm
  #23  
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Default Re: Driving on red diesel

Originally Posted by licinius
Dirty????????? There's nothing dirtier than diesel!
What kind of diesel? It makes all the difference in the world what kind of diesel you're talking about. Petroleum diesel is dirty bottom-of-the-barrel crap, but bio-diesel (made from veggie oil) is as clean as it gets (but it must be refined to be clean).

Originally Posted by licinius
I ran my transit on veggie for years & there was not one bit of smoke came out of the exhaust (apart from the lesson I learned in cold weather). When it came to the MOT the tester even had to check his computer was working because of the zero readout & finally no it doesn't smell like McDonalds (proof that you're speculating) it actually smells like doughnuts.
Straight Vegetable Oil ("SVO") is of course very dirty. We know this because of the glycerin deposits and the fact that grease cars need an engine rebuild sooner than standard petroleum diesel.

If you want to be clean, you need to refine your SVO to remove the glycerin and crappy byproducts that aren't good for the engine. If you take that step, then your engine will last double that of an engine that burns petroleum diesel, and 4 times that of a grease car (that is, 400k miles before a rebuild is needed).

BTW, you can burn 100% of refined SVO (aka bio-diesel), no need to mix it.

So here are the figures for engine rebuilds:
  • grease burning diesel engine: 100k miles
  • diesel engine burning normal manufacturer-endorsed petroleum diesel: 200k miles
  • diesel engine burning clean bio-diesel refined from SVO: 400k miles

Last edited by cognitivLib; Nov 14th 2011 at 7:05 pm.
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Old Nov 14th 2011, 7:15 pm
  #24  
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Default Re: Driving on red diesel

Originally Posted by Domino
actually even that isnt true as a tele prog last year looked into that and if it is filtered etc the way it should be then it will not smell of the products cooked in it. Just can't remember if it was dunkin donuts or not.
What exactly do you mean by "filtered"? If you mean fully refined using lye to remove the glycerin, then yes, the result is very clean. It looks like apple juice, and it's about as fluid as apple juice. I could not pick up any odor after sniffing a paper towel that collected lots of exhaust from highly refined bio-diesel.

But if it's simply filtered through a screen so that you don't have french fries going into the engine, I've heard it smells like McDonalds. I've never sniffed the rear of a grease burner myself though.

It would be different in licinius' case, because in that case it's not waste oil but COTS SVO, and it's just a small part of a blend.
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