what is bio diesel?

[SteveO]

Hi ,what is bio deisel?can it be bought like normal deisel/tax already paid ?what does it cost?if i descide to run my 1600 t25 on cooking oil/mixture and do it legaly,how do i pay tax on it?monthly/yearly?when i don,t no how many mls i will do?or do i do it and keep a record,and pay at end of year?cheers steve.o

[excalibur]

veggie oil is not considered bio diesel, and so therefore does not attract the lower rate of duty which is 20p litre.

If you want to run legaly you will need to register your intent with Revenue and Customs. They will approve you as a fuel producer and will have to file returns monthly and pay the tax on every litre of oil you have used as fuel. The current rate is 47p litre.

You must keep your records for 6 years and we can insist on entering your premises to check records and inspect fuel.


Hope this helps

[SteveO]

hi,thanks for reply,so tax at 47p a ltr+oil around 35p=82p not realy worth doing"so where the insentive?.
so is boi deisel waste oil?what is it?cheers steve.o

[kevtherev]

Biodiesel and SVO (straight Veg Oil).
Sources of SVO are not just palm oil, they are... oil seed rape (yello fields ) soyabean, sunflower, some types of algae, and recycled chip oil et al,
A recent survey in t'states found there was 4.5 Billion gallons of used veg oil available for recycling
and we scoff more chips than them

The other way to fuel a diesel engine with vegetable oil is to reduce the oil's viscosity before it gets into the tank and in this way, neither the engine or vehicle needs modification. Biodiesel is the name of a variety of ester-based oxygenated fuels made from vegetable oils or animal fats. A Methyl ester of vegetable oil or what we now call Biodiesel is very similar to normal petrochemical based diesel fuel. Basically the veg oil is washed in hydrogen peroxide to remove the glycerine and washed with water to remove any impuritiesIts viscosity is only twice that of diesel fuel and its molecular weight is roughly 1/3 of vegetable oil, hence it can be used as a straight petro-diesel replacement. This reduced viscosity vegetable oil is now called Biodiesel with a number of standards like the European EN 14214 standard and American ASTM standard defining exactly what the properties of that oil should be.

In the short term and until the diesel engine industry fits all engines with fuel heaters, Biodiesel might be the quickest way to drive the fuel's adoption and start displacing some of the petro diesel we use today.

[Horza]

The term biodiesel usually refers to a straight petro diesel replacement fuel manufactured from new vegitable oil and other ingredients (often petrochemicals). This is a fairly loose term and can ultimatly mean 95% petro diesel with some processed vegitable oil content. Unfortunatly for any environmental concerns the vegitable oil in question is most likly to be Palm oil as it is much cheaper to cut down rainforests and grow and process palm oil than it is to use anything else.

As you have spotted it is deeply impractical to use locally produced rape seed oil or even recycled veg oil because the tax break is non existant. The reason the tax break is non exsistant is because Oil Companys have a much much better lobby than farmers or environmentalists. The powers that be in this country are being pulled by the very rich lobby and pushed by the fear that cheap palm oil will be the only option. It's easier to do nothing and watch the whole thing go to hell in a handbasket.

News today though is Tescos are going into bio diesel in a large scale way. Although I have no love of Tesco and their ilk they are a powerful force politically and if these guys become players we may actually see some action. Alternatively we may just see the Palm oil scenario mentioned above.

Ah well.