Re: Diesel & cooking oil

From: mark@ehle.homelinux.org
Date: Mon Oct 03 2005 - 03:51:58 PDT

Also, when lye is mixed with methanol, the resulting chemical, methoxide, is
exeedingly caustic and can eat your skin without you knowing it, because it
quickly kills nerve endings. Nasty stuff. It' already eched the glass in my
blender after just two test batches.

A good many biodiesel sites recommend that you build your processor in such a
way that you never come into contact with methoxide, including the vapor.

I am currently building a 50-gallon biodiesel processor out of an ancient
electric water heater to make fuel for my home oil furnace, and maybe for my
M35. As I understand it, biodiesel does not have to be as clean for use in a
furnace as it does in an engine. My plan is just to make it and store it in my
current heating oil tank, along with what the oil company pumps in there. They
are supposed to be compatable in any ratio.

My only worry is that after I get good at it, the government (spurred on by the
petroleum industry) will decide to make used cooking oil a hazardous chemical,
and require that all restuarants hire only licensed waste haulers to dispose of
it.

Mark

--------------
Quoting Ryan Gill <rmgill@mindspring.com>:

> At 5:43 PM -0500 10/2/05, MV wrote:
> >Unless I'm mistaken, the only way you can blind=20
> >or kill yourself with methanol is to drink it.
>
> Or breathe the vapors or absorb it through your=20
> skin. We're talking pure, methanol here, not a=20
> solution of methanol and water.
>
>
> --
> --
> Ryan Gill rmgill@SPAMmindspring.com
> ----------------------------------------------------------
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> |s| |s| |s| |s| |x| |x|
> '60 Daimler Ferret '42 Daimler Dingo '42 Humber MkIV (1/3)
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