Struggling Start Up
There is a note on the website it was created for free. I`d guess it is a struggling start up and hope the website doesn`t reflect the product.
Wonder if the OP has any connection to it, apart from a customer?
Are modifications required to use the fuel? Does it work well? At $1.42/L last time, I`d need to be sure of quality, if things go wrong it's not like parking the car at the side of the road and calling road service.
Hi Bruce
Its actually a friend of mine who has started this business, but is using my vessel as the test case. So while i'm sure the spelling mistake are there the guy doing this is a diesel genius.
To answer your questions
Yes simple mods are required, essentially the oil needs to be heated above 70 degress c before entering the injection pump and you need to be able to switch fuel while running (ie start up on diesel, run on veg, shut down on diesel). nothing overly hard about these mods but won't work without them very well.
Does it work, apparently in 2006 7% of germany's commercial diesel use was actually straight canola oil, (which is a hell of a lot of engines running of plant oil) so given those numbers I would say yes it does, plus there a thousands of youtube videos showing the conversions and talking about there experiences etc.
Price, yeah its a big difference in cost. we have 16,000L of capacity so for us saving 10c a litre is a big deal. Bio Conversions say they will supply oil at a guaranteed standard to anywhere in Australia for $0.95+gst so for us this is a major factor to converting, also when we head north we will be organising a container load of fuel when we reach Asia which we have had quoted at $0.40USD per litre at the wharf.
Quality If every you have a problem with the oil system you can simply switch back to diesel (just like a petrol/LPG car) so its not like choosing only one fuel type. Also because Australia only has low sulfur diesel the oil actually has higher lubricating properties than diesel so can actually extend life of the engine.
After doing the amount of research we have done we ended up choosing a bioltec kit over some of the others out there (Elsbett, Greascar, Plantdrive, ATG etc) as the bioltec has a long track record in the european commercial market and is the same kit used in this North Sea Trawler
In terms of colder climates, you can use this fuel down to around 0 celsius without to much drama, you just have to heat the oil to increase its viscosity, which is quite simple using oil/water heat exchangers. The conversion kit itself is a computer that monitors engine load, heat and fuel density and is programmed to only use waste oil when it is suitable (ie none on start up, idle, very low load and shut down) that said from what we have seen it's normal to achieve around 90% oil time and 10% diesel run time. I've attached the spec sheet of the kit we are using so you can read some of the details for yourself.
Because we knew we were going to convert to oil when we choose our engine we went for a mechanically injected motor so we could have greater tolerances with fuel (filtered to 1 micron is good enough, versus achieving a specific fuel standard for a common rail motor).
This type of conversion isn't for everyone and does require a leap of faith. But it's been our experience that its really not that big a leap and you don't need to rely on faith, as the Germans and Americans have been running this type of tech for years and have found all of the teething problems so they can be easily avoided.
Happy Boating
Damien
