BioDiesel

biodiesel bottom-line: No good for cruising yachties

The biodiesel bottom-line: No good for cruising yachties

Regardless of people's personal opinions whether Biodiesel is a good thing or a bad thing, one thing is for sure. It will attack normal gaskets, hoses, o-rings, and possibly synthetic fuel tanks found on many vessels.

This is the official position of Northern Lights, a world leader in marine diesel engines, regarding Bio Diesel as written by Bob Senter, and published here with his permission: (Warning: Bob's view is hotly denied by some biodiesel engineers.)

article here:
http://www.sail-world.com/cruising/index.cfm?nid=68587&rid=11

Bio-diesel will attack and degrade rubber fuel lines. In order to run BD over the long term you'd need to change all rubber fuel lines to viton or another synthetic (non rubber) fuel line. It also will "clean" your fuel cells- and that process will start and continue to clog your fuel cell screens and all filters. It gives you less miles per gallon burned as well. It does has a higher lubricity, and that's a good thing. If you can live with the down sides, then buy it. It by itself does not clog fuel injectors or cause issues, but if you fail to consider the cleansing and degradation of fuel lines then you are asking for trouble if using more than B20.

Biofuel vs Biodiesel

So, where did you disappear to Josh?

I've seen several references to the aircraft industry seeking out a 'biofuel' resource for fueling their planes. Here is one of the latest I've run across.

...making use of desert areas and salt water....WOW

A question arise in my mind Are there enough similarities between this aviation biofuel and biodiesel fuel that it could be utilized in our yachts??

Algae based Fuel for Airlines

Just found that other article I mentioned as a posting I made on another forum

...from another forum

Next Big Bio-Fuel - ALGAE - YouTube

US Co. producing Algae in Austrailia

...from another forum...

The issue with bio-diesel is that it is harmful to standard rubber gaskets and o-rings commonly used in injector pumps. You would have to change the affected gaskets to Viton material which has a lower service life but works with bio-diesel.

Bio diesel

This discussion is running in circles and reappears over and over again.

We had started a pilot project on Bio diesel by converting a Mercedes UNIMOG truck in our logistic sector for the use of different types and blends of bio diesel. We did that in cooperation with and permission of Mercedes because it was a brand new truck. After 8 month, the injection pump died. Guess what happened.

Mercedes did not pay for the repair because the producer of that injection pump, Bosch, never cleared that pump for the use with bio diesel. After 6 more month, the engine needed new piston rings, valve seals and cylinder liners, meaning a complete overhaul.

The next tests were about long term storage of bio diesel (when being used for the emergency generator on ships for example). That stuff went bad after about six month, became totally unusable and caused some expensive tank and line cleaning.

We are done with that type of fuel for propulsion and heating. Vegetable oil or alcohol destilate type of fluids belong in the kitchen for cooking or in a bottle as rum or wiskey but not in an engine unless in an emergency situation.

A lot of public services in Germany like fire departements, road services and public transport services converted their diesel trucks, busses and special vehicles for the use of bio diesel, both as blended fuels and up to pure vegetable oil. This was not because of the reduction of costs, it was more for political correctness, for a more green image. Most of those services have come back to normal road diesel after some expensive and painfull repairs.

For sure, we have to look for alternative fuels, both due to shortage of mineral oil and due to ever rising costs. But converting human and animal food into fuel for propelling cars, ships and planes can not the way to go.

The only real alternative and green type of bio fuel are IMO the algea type bio reactor fuels that are produced with the help of sun energy. But I have no idea how much of that fuel can be produced in a mass production scenario. Up to now it seems those reactors only excist in a type of laboratory scale and enviroment.

Again, my personal favorite way of producing fuel for diesel engines would be converting natural gas into diesel fuel (called GTL diesel). This is the cleanest diesel fuel possible, has no disadvantages, can be produced in greatest quantities, does not require modifications on the engines or fuel lines / tanks and NG will be available for hundreds of years to come.

That will give us the time to invent the Flux Compensator or find the Delitium Cristals .

A friend of mine runs his whole fleet of cars and light trucks on canola oil without troubles, only the gasket conversion. But it has to be pre-heated in winter and you´ll have to start and stop on diesel.
But biodiesel builds up more coal in the cumbustion chamber than real diesel fuel and you have to be aware of that when running below the ideal performance of your engine. And it´s not suiteable for modern common rail systems and more in danger of growing unwanted things in your fuel tank.

Besides that, there is a successful method to synthesize high quality, trouble free diesel fuel from biomass and/or plastic garbage.

Are any bio diesel manufacturers spending the required lab and field time to develop a bio diesel product that will be BETTER for a current Tier IV than conventional diesel? Until Chevron, Shell etc issue a joint release with Cat, Cummins MTU etc that all engine warranties and performance are guaranteed, bio diesel will remain in the shadows.

I just watched a very interesting presentation on these fuels on a PBS NOVA science presentation

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tech/algae-fuel.html

If it were really such a world beater I assume there would be more recent facts and publicity that did not all revert back to

Algae Fuel

• Posted 08.18.09
• NOVA scienceNOW

Warning to the less than wise.

Well the fuel due to environmental legislation has evolved to very purified and tightly control levels over the last nearly 50 years. Diesel manufactures design their engines and control systems (injection systems) for the specification as it is mostly in the civilized world illegal to operate on non-specification fuels. Also, due to the same environmental concerns the engines have evolved to meet very stringent standards of emission from all sources including crankcase ventilation. Even evaporation from tanks is tightly controlled.

The problem is using non-specification fuel is often illegal and outside of the specification of the fuels allowed and tolerated by the modern equipment. Sadly the extreme nature of this has run up costs of fuel and engines... while making them intolerant of even the slightest contamination. The fuel of today is 1000 or more times or more cleaner than the fuel of 1970. The push for alternative fuels has not evolved to the same level and with ham handed legislation and desires for cheap or bio-fuels often does not take into account the problem that it is not to the same tightly controlled specifications yet.

Diesels can run on many things, start on fewer, and, even when badly worn, they will even run on NO FUEL but the lube oil in the crankcase: hard to turn it off in that case!

DO NOT run a modern diesel on non specification fuel or that not approved by the manufacturer. You are not smarter than they are... they already have programs looking at these issues. Serious engineering, material science and chemistry is involved. You do not have millions of dollars to do the work they are doing... nor the experience. If you think you do you are a fool.

Yes, as interesting engine hobby... no more. Old engines of the pre-emission control era can accept a lot a modern engine cannot. BUT none of those are approved except by being grandfathered in but only as they exist until worn out and scraped.

I doubt any insurer or marine safety regulator would approve unless you have the kind of backup that the certification of a manufacturer of diesel does. Consider those things before running crap in you boat... if the costs of repairs do not deter you.

In my opinion yachting is recreation not an engine development project.

That all said, if I were to want to play with alternative fuels. Fumigation of diesel engine with natural gas, liquified petroleum gas or hydrogen is something that could be more beneficial. Typically with about 7% of fuel mass replaced with a gaseous fuel mixed with he air about double that will be saved in diesel fuel mass. Furthermore, emissions will be greatly reduced. Why, is the gas and air mix prevents the formation of the carbon particulate associated with diesel, even high pressure injection systems are used. Furthermore, if one wanted the diesel could be pilot injected as basically the spark that starts combustion process and the ratio can be nearly all gaseous fuel. HTM09 will know a little about this I might think.

Could algae based fuels be more safely utilized in turbine type engines such as the airlines use??,.....as was suggested back here
http://www.yachtforums.com/threads/biodiesel.10871/page-3#post-189060

I couldn't agree more. If one wants to play then go do it, but don't play and experiment on a boat you're trying to use for pleasure. I read questions every day here and elsewhere about fuel, about oil and other lubricants, about how to wash or wax the boat, about taking care of teak. My answer to all is read the manual and, if you can't find a manual, talk to the manufacturer. Engines have been developed and tested using certain fuels and lubricants. Anything else is a gamble. I read people asking what wax to use on Awlgrip and it takes 30 seconds to go to their website and read very clearly not to wax it. People talk about cleaning teak. Well, I prefer to do what the manufacturer of our teak says and he even provides videos.

The manufacturers spend extensively on research and development. They know the most about their equipment. Now if one wants to go off and experiment, then fine. But don't do it on a boat you expect to use and don't be surprised or expect a manufacturer to help you when it backfires.

The Bio diesel discussion has more or less come to an end in Europe, as far as onroad transportation is concerned. Modern high performance diesel engines according to Euro 6 onroad directive with ultra high pressure common rail injection systems and piezo injectors and Oxi cats plus SCR cats do not like bio diesel and do not work with them (like my V8 diesel Audi A8). The lowest quality diesel allowed for those engines is EN 590 diesel, means almost no sulfur and may be some petroleum in winter for viscosity.

Marine diesel oil or marine gas oil would stop those engines within minutes by clogging the fuel filters and common rail systems and destroy the piezo injectors and the catalytic converters bejond repair.

Older diesel engines with in-line fuel injection pumps or distributor fuel injection pumps and no catalytic converters will run on almost everthing including plain canola oil or corn oil.

We have one very old truck (from 1951) and a much older small diesel tug boat which run both happily on bearly filtered vegetable oil which was used for frying french fries. Only the biggest pieces of old potatoes have to be filtered out . The exhausts smell like a burger shop, thats all. The oldest diesel engine in our inventory is a more than 100 year old stationary Deutz single cylinder diesel engine, which was used as a fire pump.


That beast would run on rancid butter, if needed or any type of salat oil straight out of a grocery store.

Marine diesel engines are a different story. Our big two stroke diesel engines in the larger cargo vessels, which are designed for the use of Heavy Fuel Oil up to HFO 700 are not allowed to run on high quality road diesel for more than 24 hours due to lubrication problems. If for political reasons, HFO would be banned worldwide, we would have to change those engines for the permanent use of high quality diesel (piston rings, maybe cylinder liners, valve ceals and most likely the injection pumps and or the injectors.

The medium speed diesel engines in smaller feeder ships and the generators of the bigger ships will run on any diesel and heavy fuel oil up to HFO 380 and up to high quality road diesel but I doubt very much, MAN or MAK would clear any of those engines for the use of Bio diesel.

The high speed diesel engines (MTU, MAN and Caterpillar) will need MGO as minimum quality and as far as I know, none of them is cleared for Bio Diesel either. Our inland waterway cargo vessels run legally and fully happy on heating oil all year long (MTU 4000 ironman series). They are built for this type of fuel.

And even with Marine gas oil and EN 590 diesel most of them reach only IMO TIER II level. For IMO TIER III we will need selective catalytic reduction (SCR), which means additional tankage for UREA or as it is called in Europe AdBlue. All our newer Euro 6 trucks (and my diesel Audi) are equipped with an additional UREA tank to meet the Euro 6 requirements, which they will not reach with Bio diesel. App. 1 % of the fuel used is added as AdBlue into the SCR Cat. And by law, car engines will nor start again with an empty AdBlue tank.

The new big ship engine rooms will now contain for exhaust gas purification a Diesel Exhaust Purifier Scrubber (for sulfur, CO, HC and particle reduction), a selective catalytic converter (NOx) and an oxidation catalytic converter (CO2) plus an exhaust silencer. We are talking about equipment with the size of a medium sized church!!! The exhaust gases will be almost cleaner than the breathing air in the engine room . Some of the very big two strokes will only meet IMO TIER III as dual fuel engines by using HFO or MDO in international waters and LNG (liquid natural gas) in restricted national waters. Btw. we have the first Tug with LNG propulsion only (MAN). IMO TIER III without any exhaust gas aft treatment!!!

When we did our internal testing for alternative diesel fuels, we bought a few liquid store containers with Gas to Liquid Diesel for testing purposes in KATAR. We tested this GTL Diesel as pure fuel and as blended fuel together with MDO, MGO and EN590 road diesel. As plain GTL Diesel and blended with up to 60 % EN590 Diesel our IMO Tier II engines and our EURO 5 trucks could meet IMO TIER III and Euro 6 standards. No adjustments in the engines necessary, the fuel consumption was reduced also the density of GTL is slightly lower than normal diesel and there was no, I say again, no visible smoke because GTL diesel does not contain any sulfur, aromathic carbon hydrogen and parafin, the major causes of visible smoke and particles in diesel exhausts.

This would be my way for future individual mobility, onroad and offroad
transportation and for aviation fuel (Kerosin). Natural gas will be available for many more (hundreds of) years and if you would include the metan ice in the deep oceans, literally for ever. The cleanest type of fuel available on earth.

And taking away human or animal food for the production of fuel for propulsion purposes is IMO unethical and totally unnecessary.

Just my 2 (Euro) Cents

Still looking for answer to this.

Brian... pretty much anything that burns can be used to power a turbine that is comparable with the fuel system components. For example, a certain famous yachtsman used to fly over the pole to visit his in build sailboat... refueled his jet at an eskimo outpost using plain old gasoline / petrol... then would fly over the pole. Turbines are a much different animal than either a diesel or gas internal combustion piston engine. If it burns and can be ignited and pumps safely through the fuel system it will run the thing.

Interestingly, in the early days of internal combustion engines diesel and gasoline / petrol were not refined but well head gas (crude) was used... pretty much through WW1. Sir Harry Ricardo made his career by starting out rating different well head crude that Shell oil supplied from around the world to power engines. From that he developed the octane and cetane rating engines. Refineries still used these engines to rate the products as to octane and cetane ratings. Ricardo was the leader in that research.

What people do not understand is gasoline / petrol or diesel are refined mixes of many different hydrocarbons. Now-a-days some of the higher spec. diesels are closer to being one hydrocarbon than gasoline / petrol. Algae fuel and diesel from catalyst reforming natural gas is very pure fuel and result in a very narrow range of hydrocarbon.. Crude produces a range of similar hydrocarbons form reduction by cracking an catalyst reduction but still it is a range of individually identifiable chemicals. Octane is a particular hydrocarbon chemical (one specific molecule) it's burning characteristics in an engine are used to define 100 octane... mixes of other chemicals can result in 100 octane rating but can be used to create a spec. fuel but may be different mixes. Cetane (one specific molecule) defines 100 on the cetane scale for rating fuel for compression ignition characteristics. You often hear of light oil crude coming from a well or a field (usually Saudi Arabia) that is very near a gasoline / petrol or diesel that could actually run an engine. Heavy crude can be tar like... or wax line. Crude oil from Pennsylvania were very good long chain crude making good lube oil out of the ground. The shale oil from the American West is a wax like crude (actually a thin layer of gray or tan or brown colored wax) that is found at the interface of layers of shale oil shales.

As a kid a girl friend of mine dad discovered an oil field deposit... they became very rich very quick... I got a summer job for her dad in the 1960s mapping shale oil formations for his exploration company (drill... core... move to the next) hell hot work. My grandfather the one that was a retired merchant master... took up exploring the arctic areas and that is where he made lots of money... see you can find it and sell the leases but don't exploit it. Why because he like hunting and fishing and loved the arctic regions... and also having good times like the yacht... and the oil exploration paid for it. Only a Scotsman would be crazy enough to kill a walrus or a whale with a harpoon from a skin boat... he loved that kind of bloody and dangerous entertainment.

Brian, as I said before, algae based bio fuels and fuels made of organic garbage are IMO the only type of non fossil type of fuels, which are ethical correct. Converting food into fuel is not the way to go. Neither for the enviroment nor for the creatures on this globe (btw. the only one we have).

The type of use for this bio fuels is the other side of the medal. Wheather they are converted into petrol type fuels for external ignited combustion processes or into diesel type fuels for self igniting combustion is a secondary decision.

Both for reciprocating or rotating piston engines and turbines (axial and radial) a fuel has to fulfill certain prerequisites for existing engines or it has to have dependable and constant characteristics an engine can be designed for or adapted to.

A turbine will run basically on everything that has a certain viscosity (you must be able to pump it), burns in a pedictable way and does not explode and is not as aggressive that it destroys or harms the turbine, the storage tanks or the piping.

The PT-6 turbine of my Turbine Bonanza and our King Airs are cleared for the unlimited use (alternate fuels) or limited use (emergency fuels) of any type of Kerosin (Jet-A types), petrol and AVGAS (the EGT and max allowable torque has to be watched), heating oil and several types of onroad and offroad diesel. Bio fuel of any origin is not allowed. The problems with non aviation fuels are the absence (or unwarranted amount) of anti freeze, anti corrosion and fire retartend components as per certification of the aviation authorities.

Means, when flying with diesel for example, you have to stay in OATs of above zero centigrade. And the use of alternative fuels is different for any turbine. The Rolls Royce Turbines of our Bell Helicopters and the Soloy Cessna 206 H are far more restricted as far as alternate and emergency fuels are concerned. We would happily use diesel in helicopters and all fixed wing turbine aircrafts all day long but it is not according to the certification of those aircraft and their engines.

With jet engines, it is even more restictive. Will say, if the engine and aircraft manufacturers will request the certification of algae based fuels for aviation use (after thorough testing) and this stuff is available in decent quantity and being affordable, we will be happy to buy and use it. It will be most likely only be blended with fossil based Kerosin anyhow.

But we have run a PT-6 turbine on a testbed (not in the air) with different types of fuel including the pure GTL diesel. I say again, this Gas to Liquid Diesel would be perfect for all diesel engines, turbines and jet engines.

Non aviation turbines are a different story. The will and they are allowed to run on almost everything that can be pumped and burns. From ancid butter )) to petrol, Avgas, bio fuels, alcohol, diesel and up to natural gas, as long as the piping, the fuel storage, the seals and bearings do not get destroyed or harmed by the fuel or its ingredients. The only stuff they do not like is Bio Gas, which is produced in bio reactors from gras or corn or even worse from liquid manure. This stuff has no constant quality, flame point and energy content. It will destroy any turbine in the short or long run.

Will say, if this algae based fuel will be certified for aviation use and is available in decent quantity and affordable, we will be happy to use it. I am absolutely sure this stuff can be produced according to aviation standards and needs.

Just my 2 (Euro) Cents