Bio-Petrol?

[dave45]

Bio-diesel seems to be well-established now - plenty of websites telling you how to convert your dirty chip-pan oil.

But what about my petrol-engined flymo? What bio-fuel will work? Alcohol?

Could I theoretically ferment plant matter and distill it to make pure enough alcohol that would work in a petrol engine?

and its a 2-stroke - so I'd need to mix it 40:1 with chip-pan oil??? Has anyone experimented in this area?

[The Riff-Raff Element]

Possible, yes, though you would need to modify the engine to burn pure alcohol. But unhappily home distillation is unlawful and downright hazardous

[Clara]

Get a sheep

[Brod]

Bio-diesel seems to be well-established now - plenty of websites telling you how to convert your dirty chip-pan oil.

But what about my petrol-engined flymo? What bio-fuel will work? Alcohol?

Could I theoretically ferment plant matter and distill it to make pure enough alcohol that would work in a petrol engine?

and its a 2-stroke - so I'd need to mix it 40:1 with chip-pan oil??? Has anyone experimented in this area?

Any petrol engine which will run on unleaded should run on Methanol (95% pure or 195 degrees proof).
Using sugar beet you should get around 280-300 gallons per acre (but of course thats taking land out of the food chain). But you cant do it using a bog standard still you need a fractionating column still to get the proof high enough, and unless you're industry or a university you're unlikely to get a licence from Customs and Excise unlike in America where as long as you promise to "denaturise" the methanol (ie redend it undrinkable) any bod can get a licence.
Doubt if chip fat oil has enough lubrication for 2 stokes.
Suggested reading " Methanol and Other Ways Round the Petrol Pump" overview on alternatives to running IC engines
"Making It on The Farm" Home methanol production in the USA including drawings for experimental fractionating stills

[Wombat]

Howdy,

As far as I am aware, simple fermentation gives rise to ethanol (drinkable and in need of denaturing). Methanol is a poison to start with .

It is possible to make a fractionating column, I used 'em when I worked in a lab. A laboratory supply house should be able to provide a small scale distillation set up and fractionating column out of Quickfit or other brand of Lab glassware. I have no idea of the costs these days, though.

From memory 95% ethanol 5% water is the best you can get from distillation.

Nev

[Odsox]

If you got yourself a 4 stroke instead of a 2 stroke you could convert it to run on wood gas.
Your 2 stroke would probably work but I think it would be impossible to load the gas with oil vapour.
But then you could also go one step further and dry your grass clippings to use as fuel ... now there's a thought.

[MuddyWitch]

Clara suggested sheep...

An article I wrote a few years ago;

Gardening With Guinea Pigs!!!

No, dear reader, do not despair we are not about to suggest hitching the tiny animals to miniature ploughs! This article was born out of respect for the little “hairy pigs” that we bought for our daughter, to give her some experience of looking after other living creatures. The fussy soon wore off, as we say in Leicester. (Meaning she was soon bored with them, thus I received an unexpected Xmas present!)

They were already in my affections as the lawn hadn’t needed mowing since their arrival. The lawn mower hasn’t left the shed for 18 months now and the lawn is like green velvet. (The only criticism is that you can’t set guinea pigs on “high cut” in March!)

Not only do Pebbles & Cobbles (as they are called) graze the grass, but their dung is effectively pelleted silage! They also love dandelions, plantain, groundsel shepherd’s purse, chickweed, cow parsley, clover, brambles(but remove the thorns first), ground elder and cleavers. Sadly they won’t eat docks or bindweed, as these are poisonous to them, and too many apple fallings can cause mouth ulcers, one or two a week is fine though.

They have separate runs because, although they are brothers, two male guinea pigs will fight to the death. So why didn’t we just have one? Because he would have died of loneliness! Guinea pigs are sociable creatures and need company. However a male and a female would have had obvious results and meant more runs than we have lawn space!

These runs have mesh on all six faces as we have foxes in our area. We move the runs about every two to three days in the Summer and once a week in Spring and Autumn. In Winter they are “parked” so-to-speak, as the grass isn’t growing and they are fed hay, dried food and kitchen scraps. Our local greengrocer is only too happy to give us what he calls a “bunny bag” every few days. This consists of all the spoiled cabbage, cucumber, carrot, lettuce, etc that he normally has to pay to have removed.

We don’t bring them indoors in Winter, but we do offer some protection (in the form of heavy polythene sheeting over their runs), against the harshest of the weather, guinea pigs are quite hardy.

They need very little “maintenance” which is why they make ideal pets for children of about 7-14. (Younger children may be rough, and teens get bored, as we discovered!) Once a week their hutches need to be cleaned out & a fresh layer of sawdust spread about 5cm thick, then the sleeping compartment needs bedding. We use shredded junk mail! Hand shredders are most environmentally friendly and guinea pigs don’t care what they are sleeping in.

The “used” sawdust makes a great contribution to the compost heap. The guinea pigs have started the compost for you in their bellies and with their urine!

These adorable little creatures live around six years in captivity so are a long term commitment, but most people could find a neighbour to foster them for the odd week’s holiday. Many local RSPCA shelters have small animals like guinea pigs and would be happy to re-home a couple to you if you had suitable space and time.

(By-the-way, they aren’t from Guinea & they aren’t pigs, they are from the South Americas and are rodents.)

MW

[dave45]

from my memory of reading around this subject, the ethanol/methanol mix depends largely on what material you ferment in the first place... if you use traditional wine/beer ingredients you will get primarily ethanol. I doubt you will get that much from potato peelings or grass clippings! Methanol's other name is wood-alcohol, and is definitely not good for drinking. Both are inflammable of course and dangerous to produce if you aren't careful.... I remember setting my desk alight as a kid by spilling meths from my chemistry set burner! So you may only need a fractionating distiller if you have a mix of alcohols from your fermentation in the first place AND you need to separate them. You do for drinking purposes, but surely not for fuel use ?

If it wasn't for the legal (tax-collecting) restrictions in this country I would have though there was plenty of "scrap" biomass capable of useful fermentation and distillation for fuel. And you could still chuck the residue on your compost heap (and maybe produce methane from further decomposition!)

[Wombat]

Yup, so-called because it was obtained from the destructive distillation of.................wait for it..........................wood!

Nev

[dave45]

how exactly do u distill wood? its a solid !

[Wombat]

You stuff it in a thing called a retort and heat the lifing daylights out of it. You get all sorts of interesting orgnaic compounds out of it that flash off and are condensed by the condensor including metahnol and acteic acid and eventually tar, the residue left is charcoal. Before the advent of oil the process was used to extract all sorts of compounds for industrial use.

Nev

[basil_brush]

Hmm, well when I as a wee kid I did get a 50 cc moped to run on acetone (nail polish remover), just poured into the empty fuel tank and spent a few minutes trying to start it. Worked pretty damn well. I doubt you would have any problems running a small combustion engine on ethanol (yeast alcohol) - though it may cause engine damage in the long term, it depends on how rich your mixture is and how sensitive to abuse your engine is. Lawnmowers are good engines for experimenting due to their simple design and not having those damn injection computers. I'm not sure what the combustion velocity of ethanol is compared to octane, but make sure your mixture isn't too rich otherwise you'll get detonation rather than burn and will damage the crankshaft. This will of course completely void any warranty you might have.

Contrary to other comments I would not regard distilling as dangerous. If you can bake cakes or solder pipes without burning your house down then you can distill alcohol. Just remember to keep your receiving flask away from the heated distillation flask - alcohol and naked flames are not a good mix. If you're too clumsy to safely distill then get yourself an electric water distiller and use that - it'll cost you about 180 pounds on ebay - though they are slow and only hold 4 litres at a time. If you're new to distilling then try this home-brew page for an overview:

http://www.brew-magic.co.uk/spirit_maki ... g_faq.aspx

As for lubrication, if your engine oil will not mix with the alcohol and pass cleanly through the carburettor then replace the carburettor with a moped/scooter carburettor that has a separate jet hole for oil (I know Peugeot scooters have that type of carb). With this type of carb you do not mix the oil and fuel, you have two separate tanks, and the carb has a separate tube for the oil. The oil tube simply goes to a hole behind the venturi valve, so that oil is sucked in along with the fuel and air. I know that on Peugeot scooters there is a small pump for the oil, presumably this is because manifold vacuum on its own is not enough to draw the oil through. So if you use a scooter carb then you may need to cobble together a small electric pump between oil tank and carb. As for self-sufficiency lubricants, if none of the available plant oils will suffice then you might want to look at animal oils. Back in the old days Neatsfoot oil (oil from cow legs) was used to lubricate machinery and I heard it is still used for firearms.

As with any experimentation of this kind you should be prepared to replace your lawnmower engine eventually, as it may suffer excessive wear and tear while you're messing around trying to get the right combination of materials to replace the mainstream commercial oils and fuels.

[basil_brush]

I forgot the obvious point. Why bother spending 30-40 pounds on a second-hand scooter carb when you can just drill a hole in your current carb and use a small electric pump to feed the oil in. The trick is getting the right flow rate for oil. Too much is better than not enough though. You might need to speak with a mechanic on that issue, but checking your spark plug and piston/cylinder is always a good guide to whether you have too much oil.

Basically the moped carb oil inlet is nothing more than a hole, so the pump determines the flow rate. The best way to experiment is to use a small 12 volt DC motor, perhaps even powered from the magneto of your lawnmower, and use a variable resistor or a proper motor speed control to vary the pump flow. It's possible you might be able to use a windscreen washer pump or get an electric fuel or oil pump from a radio control airplane engine.

----------------------------------------------------------
EDIT:

While searching for pumps on google just now I found a very novel way that some radio control models pump fuel. They have a tube going from their exhaust to the fuel tank to pressurise the tank and pump fuel to the engine. I would suggest that this would be a very simple and economical way to pump oil into your lawnmower carb. Just attach some heatproof silicone tubing or copper pipe from your exhaust to the oil tank to force oil into the carb. If you put a valve (like those 90 degree lever ones they use on washing machine pipes etc.) in your pressurisation line then you can very easily control the pressure in the oil tank and hence the amount of oil going into the engine.

[basil_brush]

By the way, if you're interested in distilling alcohol, either to burn directly or to try making biodiesel (usually made with methanol but can be made with ethanol too - but much harder apparently) then you might find these pages useful:

http://www.journeytoforever.org/ethanol_link.html
http://www.moonshine-still.com

[frozenthunderbolt]

Howdy,

From memory 95% ethanol 5% water is the best you can get from distillation.

Nev

As i understand it this is because beyond this point (I thought 98%) ethanol becomes hygroscopic - it attracts moisture out of the air! Rather like our local A&P show does each year