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What is Biodiesel? Have you heard about Biodiesel as a fuel for diesel engines? Chances are you may have heard about it in the press now with the oil prices jumping 10 cents a week. It is a type of diesel fuel manufactured from vegetable oil. If you just finished the lessons on burning vegetable oil in your car, you may be a little confused about the difference between using Biodiesel and Vegetable oil as fuel. As you learned in lessons three and four, you must modify a diesel engine to have a heated fuel system in order to burn vegetable oil as fuel. (Quick review: heating the vegetable oil makes it thinner and closer to the viscosity of petroleum diesel.) Biodiesel is the byproduct of chemically modifying the vegetable oil to make it the same viscosity as petroleum diesel. This chemical process is called trans-esterification. The chemical reaction created by introducing an alcohol (such as methanol or ethanol) along with a catalyst (NaOH or KOH respectively) transforms the vegetable or animal fat into esters. (yes, that's right! You can use animal fats as well) The end result is a diesel fuel that can be used in any diesel engine without modification! Here are some great books on Biodiesel:
Instead of building lesson plans on
Biodiesel, there is a wonderful resource already
created by some great folks in the Biodiesel community called the
Make Biodiesel Tutorial. If you would like to learn more about Biodiesel, I highly recommend jumping to the
site and furthering
your Biofuel education!
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