Biodiesel

Perhaps you've read about it in the news. A man collects old french fries oil from a local diner and runs his pickup truck on something called "biodiesel". If you're like me, you probably thought, "now that's TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE!". But it turns out, it IS true. Biodiesel fuel can be made from new or used vegetable oils and can be burned in just about any diesel engine. It can also be mixed with heating oil and burned in most residential oil burning furnaces. All you to make biodiesel at home is vegetable (new or used), methanol, and sodium hydroxide (the "catalyst"), and of course some equipment.

Vegetable oil is made into biodiesel through a process called transesterification, whereby vegetable oil reacts with methanol, in the presence of a catalyst (sodium hydroxide) to form biodiesel.

The great thing about making biodiesel at home is that nearly everything you need to make it is available on EBAY! Once you've got yourself a source of cooking oil (it can be either virgin or "used"), you'll need to pick up the other ingredients for the process: Methanol and Sodium Hydroxide (also known as "lye").

Sodium Hydroxide and Methanol are often both available on Ebay, under the category Lab Chemicals. Sodium Hydroxide can sometimes be found under the Candle and Soapmaking category as well.

Once you've got your ingredients, you'll need to make a "reactor". If you want, you can buy a "ready to run" biodiesel conversion processor, but many biodiesel home brewers like the challenge of building their own sstem from "junk". The whole idea is to make this as cost efficient as possible, after all!

For those who want to go the "do it yourself" route, an old tank-style water heater is ideal for conversion into a biodiesel reactor. You can pick one up (often inexpensively!) in Ebay's Storage Tank Water Heaters category. Old water heaters are ideal because they can be used to heat the vegetable oil as well as serve as a reactor. You may need to heat your oil, depending on the purity of your oil and your recipe for making biodiesel.

Now you don't have to be a chemist to make biodiesel, but you do have to have an accurate scale or balance, for weighing out ingredients. A good scale can be hard to come by, but not if you're shopping on Ebay, which has an entire category devoted to Lab Scales and Balances. Also, since you're going to be handling potentially dangerous chemicals, you'll want to pick up a lab coat, some gloves or safety goggles in Ebay's Lab Safety category.

Finally, once you have your basic equipment in place, you're going to need to get yourself a guide book containing a biodiesel recipe and some "step by step" directions. Fortunately, there are always a number of "how to" booklets, plans, videos, and DVDs available on Ebay that can guide you through the specific steps. Just do a search for "biodiesel how to" and you'll find lots of available information!