IS Store Bought canola Oil an alternative fuel??

[blu3TDI]

i have been resaerching alternative fuels and i have come up with many different fuel types. I know that you can use used cooking oil as fuel. I am curious if you can run a tdi on plain old store bought canola oil.

 

[vwcampin]

Short answer, yes. Dumped straight in your tank, will it work, yes, for a long time reliably, nope. In a proper two tank kit or in an Elsbett single tank conversion, sure will. I would urge you however to price out new food grade oil however and you will soon find there is no real savings by doing so. You also can then get into the argument on using food for fuel, etc.

 

[Jibeho]

No crap! I bought 1/2 gallon of Canola last week for the fryer and it was $4.99. Felt like bringing my wife home a gallon of B99 for $4.47

Short answer, yes. Dumped straight in your tank, will it work, yes, for a long time reliably, nope. In a proper two tank kit or in an Elsbett single tank conversion, sure will. I would urge you however to price out new food grade oil however and you will soon find there is no real savings by doing so. You also can then get into the argument on using food for fuel, etc.

 

[GoFaster]

Read the "Experimental and Alternative Fuels: an Overview" thread.

Nutshell summary: Raw vegetable oil that has not been chemically treated to become "biodiesel" is not suitable for use in an unmodified high-technology (emission-controlled) diesel engine. Whether something can "work" in the short term is also very, very different from whether it will cause problems in the long term.

 

[BioDiesel]

Head over to biodiesel.infopop.cc Solvent Thinning for examples of running unheated VO in TDI's. Or user 'memphis_tdi' here.
I've probably bought and run 500 gallons of store bought canola and soy.
German diesels burned over 10 million gallons of "store bought" canola last year.
http://www.rerorust.com/db/

 

[T'sTDI]

For the sake of argument, lets just say you can't do it because it will save a lot of heartache in the long term when you ruin your engine. Do yourself a favor and do a proper two tank or single heated tank setup.

If thats not in the cards, I wouldn't run more than 30% canola mixed with regular D2. If your asking if this was a last resort and asking if I would attempt this. My answer would be no, I would do it the right way, or not do it at all.

Knowledge is power when talking about burning alternative fuels, especially VO. I recommend to do your research before biting the bullet.

 

[blu3TDI]

ok so there is no advantage to canola vs diesel then well there still is alot of other alternaative fuels out there i made this thread because i cant find biodiesel were i live does anyone know where that is???????\

 

[nicklockard]

ok so there is no advantage to canola vs diesel then well there still is alot of other alternaative fuels out there i made this thread because i cant find biodiesel were i live does anyone know where that is???????\

http://www.biodiesel.org/buyingbiodiesel/retailfuelingsites/showstate.asp?st=NY

 

[terry_01vw]

Of course you can run on store bought canola. Get a conversion kit from www.greasecar.com or there are a few other conversion kits out there just google it

 

[terry_01vw]

or as mentioned above run a low percentage in with regular diesel fuel. I haven't yet this summer, but the last 2 summers i've been running 25% canola oil, no modifications to the car. We have an oil press on our farm and we were lucky enough to purchase off spec canola oil and extract the oil out of it. So far the cows like the leftover canola meal and the tdi loves the canola oil but im sure lots of people will strongly disagree with what im doing but guess what, i don't care. All 7 tractors also get 25-50% oil mixed in for the last 3 summers, no problem there either. But who knows maybe next year all 7 tractors and my tdi will break down