End of the line!

WE DID IT!!!! WE GOT THE BUS TO START AND IT DROVE ALL THE WAY BACK TO ITS DEPOT!

JR's Biodiesel

On May 12th we mixed methanol, and sodium hydroxide into our vegetable oil. To mix it we placed the sodium hydroxide in to the vegetable oil and shook the bottle until it dissolved. After it dissolved we poured methanol (the measurment amount evades my memory) and placed the bottles upside down and sat over night to let everything settle to the bottom. Then on May 13th we drained all the vegetable fat out of our bottles. We poured the biodiesel into beakers and poured it back into the 2 liter bottles after they were cleaned.

Diesel Engine Diagram

JR's Blog

We have started to strain the used vegetable oil. First off I wanted to say that it smells really bad and I probobly won't ever eat school lunch again. Anyways, we found that the cheese cloth that we put over the strainer was worthless and didn't do a thing. After we found this out, we decided to pour the oil using beakers directly into the strainer. This worked for quite a while until the darn thing started to clog on us. We then had to stop, remove the strainer from the bucket, and go clean it. The problem was however was that the regular sink wasn't strong enough so we had to use a hose(my apologies to those I sprayed) which worked very well. Over all though it's been pretty succesful with five 5 gallon barrels full of the filtered vegetable oil.

Straining Used Cooking/Vegetable Oil

To strain (clean) vegetable or cooking oil, it is recommended to put a coffee filter, cheese cloth, or panty hose into a strainer or a funnel to eliminate the small chunks of food/waste that can build up inside but are too small to filter using a regular strainer.
If you put a coffee filter, cheese cloth, or panty hose into a strainer or funnel then the smaller particles of food or waste will become removable because the coffee filter, cheese cloth, or panty hose has much smaller pockets to let particles through. It is recommended to do this process more than once(5 times recommended.)

JR's bio-diesel blog

While doing some research I found a very credible source who works on engines. I decided to do a little interview with him and asked him the following questions.

1) Do you need to make any modifications to a diesel engine to make it run on a vegetable oil based bio-diesel fuel?

2) Do certain diesel engines run in different ways?

3) What should you not put in a diesel engine?
He answered the questions with the following answers.

1) Do you need to make any modifications to a diesel engine to make it run on a vegetable oil based bio-diesel fuel?
- Yes you should have to because a diesel engine runs a lot hotter than a vegetable oil based bio-diesel fuel.

2) Do certain diesel engines run in different ways?
- Older engines are a lot easier to start when they are cold but have to idle a while before being able to drive it.

3) What should you not put in a diesel engine?
- Regular gasoline
- Pure Methanol.

MOVE....THAT.....BUS!!!!!!

When I first learned about this project, I was like "Whoah..... We have to move a bus on homemade gas?". A bus. I'm talking about the bus that is always outside of RTMS that never is moved. I think we can do it. I actually am looking forward to getting this bus to go! I'm currently working on getting a guest speaker to come and talk about engines and how to set them up to be able to run on vegetable oil. I can't wait to get started on this!OORAH!