The Biodiesel Appleseed Tour's Truck












Me and Lyle Estill from Piedmont Biofuels gossip about the state of the biodiesel movement, on the tailgate of the Biodiesel Appleseed Tour truck.





      I bought my 1983 Ford F-250 truck (6.9 NA engine, stick shift, towing package, faded paint) quite cheaply a couple of years ago. It's the first big truck I've owned and I've got mixed feelings about my need for such a monster. Nevertheless, it's been good to have something that big for the teaching tour- I'm hauling around half the hardware store in it. Most of the tour has been rural so far, so security hasn't been a huge concern, but it's still a bit of a challenge doing this tour with an open-bed vehicle..

      The Ford has been pretty good to me back home in Berkeley- I haven't had any serious reliability or mechanical problems with it- but it is a bit elderly for such a massive tour. I made a halfhearted attempt at finding another vehicle before the trip, but am living on too much of a shoestring budget at the moment to be able to afford anything much better. Additionally, this summer I'd taken another big, unplanned road trip, so I didn't really have enough time to look for and work on a reliable diesel van like I wanted. I took a big gamble and drove the smoky old open-bed Ford across the continent. It's a little embarrassing to blow that much motor oil (?or underburned fuel?) out of the tailpipe when on a trip to promote clean fuel! Luckily I"m only 'preaching to the converted' - most of the attendees of my classes are already familiar with biodiesel and have decided that it's "for them" regardless of what impression I personally make. Hopefully my crummy old truck doesn't reflect badly on biodiesel in general.

     The truck tried to kill me a couple of times- I've lost my brakes in a few different ways since leaving on this tour. A rear cylinder blew out, the vacuum pump went out, the front caliper got stuck, and I destroyed a rebuilt master cylinder (?), all in the course of three weeks!.Yes, I have since then flushed all the contaminated brake fluid that probably contributed to the hydraulic failures.  Luckily no one got hurt, although my class schedule (and some vacation plans) has suffered a few times already and I've spent WAY too much time fixing things on the side of the road in the rain (including during Tropical Storm Jeanne). I'll be happy when I retire this truck to 'around town hauler' duty and get something in slightly better shape. I'm also curious to see how it does for me at the end of the tour when I'm driving on B100 in cold weather.

Online Ford diesel enthusiasts
      While broken down I've discovered that diesel Ford trucks have an amazing online support community, somewhat like Mercedes diesels do. Some of the excellent Ford discussion forums like www.thedieselstop.com and the Brotherhood of Oil Burners  (IDI-engine Ford forum) even have a state-by-state 'help network' listing- amateur or professional mechanics who are willing to drive out to help out stranded Ford diesel travelers in mechanical emergencies.

      Before this trip, I had been thinking about getting a Chevy van next because I was expecting to get slightly better fuel economy than the Ford engines (that comparison can really vary, depending on a lot of factors though). Since having my several breakdowns (which shouldn't reflect badly on Fords in general- the truck is 20 years old), I've decided that the diesel Ford online support is a massive factor in favor of Ford ownership over that for GM's (I haven't found anything equivalent to thedieselstop.com, for GM diesels). Ultimately I'd prefer something other than a Ford or a GM though. In the ideal world my dream vehicle would have a smaller engine, and I'd probably not haul quite as much stuff on tour.. I wish we could get 6-cylinder diesel vans in this country.

      I left for this trip with few expectations, and did the best I could to be prepared for it. I'll be doing this again next year, and hope that this autumn tour is a test run that'll give me a better idea of what to do next time.

The trailer and processor system
    I'm also towing a "new-to-me" trailer- a small flatbed. I picked it up right before I left, and recently got some rails put on it that allow me to mount the processor system 'in position' rather than setting it up at every stop. Unlike my feelings about the Ford, I am absolutely ecstatic about owning the trailer- it took a lot of finagling for me to acquire this thing, and owning it has made this tour much, much easier. For years now I've been hauling biodiesel processors, jugs of oil, and boxes of biodiesel labware to my classes every few weeks, and it has been so much nicer having a permanent trailer rig. The trailer bed is almost as big as the truckbed, and it's a big relief to be able to unhitch and leave behind all this 'class' gear when I"m running errands during the tour. 

    I've been able to leave it behind for a couple of classes and go to another location to teach, using just the truck, when desired. Out of concern about driving in high winds, I left it behind when I had to drive up the East Coast during Hurricane Ivan.  The trailer would also make a nice rig for towing to public biodiesel demos (once painted and cleaned up)- Earth Day and the like.  I'm trying to leave the biodiesel system uncomplicated- I want it the processor to be a model for something that people can easily build themselves, even though my own portable travel system would be better served with a completely different design.









Maud Essen explains biodiesel homebrewing to her curious neighbors with the help of the demo system on my trailer. Both vehicles are usually piled up with much more stuff than in this photo!







     I'm still trying to decide how best to set up the trailer for good processor visibility at classes or biodiesel demonstrations- I think it'd work best with the tanks mounted over the trailer axle, and with the front of the trailer used just for storage of the boxes of class equipment. The tanks are usually empty so the weight distribution wouldn't be a major concern most of the time. This would leave the processor and wash tank details visible for demos, without having to unload anything else. I would also like to put a containment tray below the tanks in case of leaks during demonstrations- a feature that homebrewers should have below their processors. The classes are logistically complicated, and sometimes we dont' get around to making a full-size batch of fuel or running a full-size wash because of the complexity- and I'd like to add another square transfer tank for carrying 'fuel to be washed' to the classes for the biodiesel washing demonstrations.

   The processor itself is an Appleseed no-weld water heater processor design. The electric heating element is a 5500W 240V. I can run it at 120 by rewiring the plug (I usually leave it as a 120V plug) and it will still be powerful enough to heat reasonably fast. The processor can be towed filled with oil or fuel- but 'glycerol settling' obviously can't happen while the liquids are sloshing around while in motion. I'm also hauling around a small demo methanol recovery still, and am toying with the idea of mounting the still's condensor onto the main processor itself and adding more of a methanol recovery demonstration onto the processor. It might look too complicated to the uninitiated, though.

Misc
    I'd like to weld on some more secure storage to the trailer for the class equipment, and add a bench vise or two to the rails, to facilitate the equipment classes that I teach. I'm hauling most of my oil or my fuel in the bed of the pickup truck itself (white transfer tank in the background above), and I"m also hoping to eventually modify one or both of my transfer tanks into a simple biodiesel processor/mixer, and possibly tap into the truck's coolant system to heat that oil. I'm carrying automotive hand tools and jacks and jackstands, air tools, a lot of plumbing and electrical hand tools, a couple of vices, a sawzall, a grinder, and an air compressor with me. The tools and my laptop are secured in an elderly Knaack lock box that was mounted on the trailer half the trip and is now on the truckbed. I had almost brought a small MIG welder along, but it wasn't necessary for most of the classes I had planned.

Other big-vehicle biodiesel travel experiences
    I"ve been on two other long-distance road trips with large biodiesel vehicles prior to this trip. In addition to those, I had also in the past made a few long trips with smaller trucks or cars where I carried my fuel in jerricans and made it in buckets or other processors at the midpoint of the trip.
  
   I went to the Southwest with the Ford last spring (pre-trailer) and brought a huge truckload of class equipment with me so I could teach a huge class in Tucson.  My friend joked that the gear gave my truck the 'Okie dust bowl refugee' look.  While in Albuquerque I built a processor out of a water heater, made most of my fuel while teaching Albuquerque people how to homebrew, and carried the trip fuel in barrels. Since then I've acquired some nice square 50-gallon transfer tanks that I've set up as an oil collections tank and a clean biodiesel fuel tank. They take up much less space than round barrels do and make my packing much easier.

   I also took another crosscountry trip in a different vehicle earlier this summer. A friend talked me into going to the East Coast so as to help him work on a classic diesel he bought in Maine via eBay. While there, we built a water heater-based biodiesel processor, and I drove back alone from the East Coast in a different, newish van which yet another California friend had also bought 'sight unseen' (it's hard to get good diesels in California, they're highly in demand due to biodiesel's popularity!). I mounted the processor upright in the back of the van, and it was really nice to be able to just swing open the doors and show off the system to people whom I met along the way. In general a van with a biodiesel or SVO-filtration rig in the 'living space' is not a good way to go- oil spills are somewhat inevitable (though avoidable with better equipment) and having the smell of rancid oil in your living space is a situation to be avoided. I talk about biodiesel with a lot of people I meet 'on the street' while traveling, and it was very good to have a nice, shiny, newish vehicle that gives the uninitiated a good first impression of homebrewing, unlike the old Ford I usually drive. It made me more willing to bring up the subject of biodiesel to people I met.

Homebrewing on the road
 I'm staying away from SVO-converting the Ford truck (a popular choice for hippie travelers who travel the kinds of distances I do) because of concerns about the Ford's Stanadyne injector pumps and SVO- I've seen quite a few Stanadyne-equipped vehicles seize the IP and snap off the pump shaft when running less-than-optimal SVO conversions (and sometimes for no apparent reason, but during SVO use). It should be noted that lots of people have done it successfully, but I think my elderly fuel system is a prime candidate for failure and I'm playing it safe.

I've managed to make about half my fuel for this tour trip so far. I'm not trying very hard- oil collections on the road is one of the worst hassles I"ve found in my travels so far, and I"ve been making fuel only when my workshop hosts have already picked up oil for me. I'm not washing my fuel on the road nor settling it properly, and over time it's caused me some hassle in the form of filter clogging from free glycerol- I think I've had some glycerol settle in the bottom of my tank on my spring Southwest trip, and that it's causing me some rough idle. This is an avoidable situation with biodiesel which is made properly, but I"m cutting corners. I think it's entirely possible to make fuel 'right' on road trips- I usually drive a couple of days, and then stay in one place for a few days which is usually enough time to make and wash homebrew fuel for the next leg of the trip. From my home biodiesel experiences, I know that the system and the equipment on the trailer will eventually improve, and that the system will become more 'invisible' to me- less of a hassle, more automated (the transfer tank processor is part of this plan, as is better dewatering of used oil). When I build a more complete oil fired burner system, I"d like to experiment with speeding up washing by heat-drying the fuel.


Turk Burner Experiments
I started experimenting with a Turk Burner while on this trip. It's a homemade waste oil burner made from two metal cans (helium or propane or freon tanks), which uses a simple blower or hair dryer as an air source to fire up various oils (see the Wastewatts yahoogroups discussion forum for more info on such burners).  It's stupidly simple and works extremely well. I haven't worked on building a system to collect heat from the burner (ie a heat exchanger), but the eventual goal is to use this kind of burner (outdoors, and far away from methanol) to heat the biodiesel process.

In the photo we were burning a very tiny amont of vegetable oil- you can see the remnants of the oil as the smaller ring underneath the swirling flames- and what is actually burning here is vegetable oil vapor. We recently burned some crude glycerol byproduct, and some 'glop' failed batches, in this unit. I've noticed that students get extremely excited about these devices in action. I get pretty excited about the idea of free BTU's.


 




Here we are using the Turk as a sort of high-powered handwarmer (burning some "glop" failed batch samples made by the class) when a bunch of us stayed very late after the St Louis biodiesel equipment class and tinkered with processors and equipment. It was a great way to get warm. Not shown in the photo is the nearby fire extinguisher. Note the safety glasses- this is still an experiment.















 
I'm currently transferring fuel to the vehicle's tank using a cheap 12V utility pump that I got on eBay (ie a Simer waterbed pump, not something I recommend in general as it's pretty slow), which can also double as a slow oil collections pump. I'm using heavy-duty black  PVC "contractor-grade" garden hose to transfer fuel or oil (flushing out the oil with biodiesel before using the same pump or hose for clean fuel transfer). I'd like to get a permanently-mounted 12V transfer pump so as to avoid unrolling miles of plumbing and wire every time I want to add fuel to the tank.

In general, this trip is a lot of work, but I'm doing the best I can with the budget I started with (ie nearly zero), and I'm slowly working my way up to a more optimal way to travel with class equipment. It should get easier with time.

more on the tour