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What does it really cost to make a gallon of bio diesel?

bio diesel


Can anyone outline the costs?

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This entry was posted on Monday, January 11th, 2010 at 8:34 pm and is filed under Bio Diesel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

4 Responses to “What does it really cost to make a gallon of bio diesel?”

  1. Good question. Without govt subsidies, probably more than the fuel is worth. You are paying for bio-diesel twice, once for it at the pump and once with your taxes.

  2. A gallon of low sulfur diesel fuel is actually far cheaper than what you pay at the pump. It is taxed far more than gasoline.

    Bio-Diesel, unless you make it on a large scale, is expensive to process, and even more expensive to buy the equipment to do it right.

    It is difficult to start a diesel engine with bio, nearly impossible in cold weather.

  3. allthebadonesaretaken on January 14th, 2010 at 10:08 pm

    A co-worker has a VW Jetta Diesel which runs on grease from local restaurants who give the grease to her at no charge. She has the equipment to refine it.
    I know that her final cost is less than a buck/gallon.

  4. To debunk some falsehoods, starting an engine on 100% biodiesel is not a problem until you get below 40 degrees, and then the issues can be handled simply by mixing somewhat with dinosaur diesel. 20% biodiesel is rated for all temperatures by the engine manufacturers.
    Biodiesel’s cost is competitive to mineral diesel. The cost is much better if you master the use of waste vegetable oil, which you can usually collect for free!

    Making your own biodiesel?

    You’ll probably spend 50 cents a gallon on methanol and lye, and a couple hundred bucks one-time to scrounge the machinery. And a penny or two per gallon for electricity. The energy costs are very small because biodiesel requires only mild heating, unlike either ethanol or dinosaur fuels which require boiling and distillation.)

    You should use virgin oil ($2.59/gal. at CostCo) until you’ve mastered the process. Don’t start with waste oil as it’s a lot more complicated to work with, even if it is free.

    In the unlikely event of a fire, it will be an oil fire like a restaurant might have, it’ll spread very fast, burn very hot, and be difficult to put out. You’ll probably lose whatever building it’s in, so better that be a shed far from your house. Tell the cops and Fire Dept. what you’re doing in advance, otherwise they will tend to assume it’s a meth lab.

    Officially you’re supposed to pay road tax on fuel you make, but biodiesel has enough tax deductions and credits to more than offset the road tax – if you bother to do all that paperwork. I’ve never heard of a home biodiesel brewer being harassed about road tax.

    All in all, it’s a lot of work per batch.

    Another option is to make a one-time modification of your vehicle so it can run straight vegetable oil directly and not bother with the biodiesel process.
    In a 2-tank system, you cold-start on regular diesel and switch to SVO once the engine is warm. This works at all temperatures.

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