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Caution: Home-brew diesel isn’t for everyone
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If you watch TV news with a gullible eye, you might get the impression you can dump the oil from the clubhouse deep-fat-fryers into your machinery and go merrily mowing away on the cheap.
Please don’t.
It’s true that Rudolph Diesel’s first practical engine in 1898 was built to run on peanut oil. It’s true that academic and industry experts have been tinkering with biodiesel fuels for at least 25 years. The key words are “experts” and “tinker.”
Used oil from a fryer contains particles of breading and meat, requiring extreme filtration. Water molecules get into the oil, and water is deadly to diesel injection pumps. Mold tends to grow quite nicely in damp vegetable oil in hot weather, and the resulting sludge can quickly plug up the lines and filters.
Pure vegetable oil and animal fat can be made to burn just fine in the combustion chamber. The problems come in storing it in a vehicle’s fuel tank and keeping it clean and dry. Commercial biodiesel is treated with alcohol (methanol or ethanol) in a process called transesterification that removes glycerine. It also helps the bio-based fuel stay blended like conventional petroleum-based diesel fuel and overcomes some storage and handling problems.
Most engine makers are OK with a 5 percent biodiesel blend (B-5), and a 20 percent (B-20) blend is acceptable in many newer diesels that have been adapted and tested for the product.
Unless you can deal with a lot of downtime and dead engines, sell that old fryer oil to a refiner who can properly handle it. Save bucks by making sure you are buying red-tinted off-road diesel that is exempt from highway taxes. A good overview of the do’s and don’ts can be found at www.JohnDeere.com/biodiesel.
You’ll also want to check with the maker of your particular engines and equipment to see if they’ve encountered problems, like fuel tanks and hoses softening up from the presence of plant- and animal-based fuel elements.
One positive side effect of biodiesel is that it makes the exhaust smell better. Switching to the new renewable fuel may boost revenues in the snack shacks and increase the sources of used fryer oil to sell to refiners.
Editor’s note: You can read about one superintendent’s experience in converting a piece of his equipment fleet to run on vegetable oil in this month’s Inside Your Environment column on Page 38.
In order to protect workers’ hearing, hearing protectors make users partially deaf, which can lead to overprotection and added workplace hazards, according to Renee Bessette, COHC, a hearing conservationist with Sperian Hearing Protection LLC. Any protection that reduces sound levels so far below the OSHA-defined 85 dB action level that it interferes with communication can be considered overprotection. To guard against overprotection, Bessette recommends a three-part strategy: 1. Know the noise levels in your facility, especially in areas where other hazards are present. Post a noise map that shows where hearing protection is required and how much. 2. Select a hearing protection device that provides the right level of protection — one that lowers workers’ exposure to a safe level without reducing ambient levels too far below 85 dB will work. 3. Make sure workers understand the risks of hazardous noises in the first place and help them understand that more protection isn’t always better. |
