tebanksgmail.com Posted October 30, 2007 Share Posted October 30, 2007 Now that oil is close to $100 a barrell, has anyone ever used bio-diesel or eco-diesel in their motorhome? I have a 1998 Swift Royale on a Fiat Ducato base - 2.8 turbo diesel. By the way if this is a thread that has come up before, can someone point me in the right direction? Thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flicka Posted October 30, 2007 Share Posted October 30, 2007 Hi Eugene I have the 2006 (old model) Fiat and asked them directly, as I did not want to invalidate my warranty. The official Fiat stance is that you should not exceed 5% bio-diesel mixture for the EVO 3 engine. I'm sure there are many on the forum that will have used various bio-fuels in older engines and found it OK. If you (top left) search and type in Bio fuels or bio-diesel, in the keyword field, I'm sure you will find some previous threads on the subject Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yesmad Posted October 31, 2007 Share Posted October 31, 2007 I used to make and sell Biodiesel and I had had a lot of happy customers who drove m/h and they ran them on 100%. The reason that I gave up selling it was that before I started up I asked the Enviroment Agency what I required to be legal, and they said that I didn't need to have an expensive PPC licence. 6 months later they came back to me and said that I did need it and that it would cost in the region of £2500 per year, I said that I might just be able to absorb those costs, and then came the kick to the swingers, he said that the application form was so complex that I would have to hire a consultant and that would cost in the region of £10,000. When we started collecting used oil, the chippies where only too glad to get rid of it, then they started charging 15p per litre for us to take it away and when we stopped they had upped thier price to 30p per litre. To make a living out of this we would have had to charge in the region of £1.10 per litre and at the time normal diesel was costing 0.95 per litre. I have to say that I always advised all my customers and I had a sign up to say that most manufactures would NOT guarantee engines running on more than a 5% Bio 95% diesel mix, but most still bought and run their vehicles on 100%. As of July this year the government changed the rules on fuel tax. If you make your own and use less than 2500 litres per year, you do NOT have to pay any fuel tax. A lot of people think that vegetable oil is Biodiesel, it isn't. Biodiesel is used or new vegetable oil that has been through a chemical process using caustic soda and Methanol and takes about 3 days to make a batch. If anyone would like to know more about Biodiesel, then please feel free to contact me. Happy camping. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mel E Posted October 31, 2007 Share Posted October 31, 2007 THE UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES . . . As Steve says, biodiesel is made from crops. Because of subsidies it increasingly makes sense to grow these crops instead of conventional ones such a wheat, maize, barley, etc. The first unintended consequence if a fall in supply of the 'standard' crops which, coupled with rising demand, is pushing grain, etc., prices through the roof. The second unintended consequence is a sudden acceleration in the rate of deforestation, especially in Brazil, to grow these crops, mainly for export. So we are destroying the world's largest lung (the Amazon Rain Forest) to grow crops to power our cars, crops that do not absorb a fraction of the CO2 that the rainforest does. As the local Brazilian Mafia have also got involved (a quick buck to be made), they are forcing local farmers to sign over their farms or face the consequences (face down in a ditch the following morning). Does nobody ever think anything through properly these days? From a reactionary Mel E ==== Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tonyishuk Posted October 31, 2007 Share Posted October 31, 2007 Mel E - 2007-10-31 2:10 PM THE UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES . . . As Steve says, biodiesel is made from crops. Because of subsidies it increasingly makes sense to grow these crops instead of conventional ones such a wheat, maize, barley, etc. The first unintended consequence if a fall in supply of the 'standard' crops which, coupled with rising demand, is pushing grain, etc., prices through the roof. and bouncy lambs ! :'( Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yesmad Posted October 31, 2007 Share Posted October 31, 2007 Mel E - 2007-10-31 2:10 PM THE UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES . . . As Steve says, biodiesel is made from crops. Because of subsidies it increasingly makes sense to grow these crops instead of conventional ones such a wheat, maize, barley, etc. The first unintended consequence if a fall in supply of the 'standard' crops which, coupled with rising demand, is pushing grain, etc., prices through the roof. The second unintended consequence is a sudden acceleration in the rate of deforestation, especially in Brazil, to grow these crops, mainly for export. So we are destroying the world's largest lung (the Amazon Rain Forest) to grow crops to power our cars, crops that do not absorb a fraction of the CO2 that the rainforest does. As the local Brazilian Mafia have also got involved (a quick buck to be made), they are forcing local farmers to sign over their farms or face the consequences (face down in a ditch the following morning). Does nobody ever think anything through properly these days? From a reactionary Mel E ==== As Mel has said there is a lot of deforrestation going on and we were getting phone calls from Malaya from companies that wanted to sell us Biodiesel for 0.42p per litre, we always declined because of what has been going on. I think that the way forward is LPG although this is not as green as people think as this is a by product of the petrolium industry. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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