Dear David, We did extensive work last year on heated Straight Palm Oil (SPO) in two-wheeled tractors and fishing boat motors. We had field trials by local farmers of four commercial tractors and did test-bed work with three others. Crude palm oil caused erosion of the pistons by late ignition but refined palm-oil (of the grade used for cooking oil) worked well. But we never got around to using it in a locomotive.
This year we have been trying a range of reactor designs to optimise methyl ester production from refined oil. We are now moving back through various forms of oil "refinement" towards the crude palm oil (CPO). And yes, we are currently using the Aleks Kak two-stage process. And yes it is currently at atmospheric pressure (although the reactor was designed to handle 200 kPa mainly as a safety feature. Even so, some enthusiastic welders have "overpressurised" it twice now through forgetting to flood (and then drain) it with water before modifying the unit). The locomotive I mentioned is running on a B50 blend: It uses esters from a one stage trans-esterification reaction of methanol with the stearin and palmitin which has separated from the CPO. This waxy stuff is probably quite comparable with the good Scottish lard. Lots of luck! Michael Allen --- Keith Addison <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >Thanks for your response, prof. Allen. I'll > formulate an inquiry to > >Mohammed Farid as you suggest. You mentioned Thai > railway application. I > >saw somewhere that German railways are using SVO in > some of their shunting > >engines. > > http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,53591,00.html > Choo-Choo Trains on Energy Crunch > > >The encouraging part of your message is you are > reacting at 60C and that > >this is near methanol boiling point. That implies > you are succeeding at > >atmospheric pressure. Do you use conc. sulphuric > acid first stage? I agree > >meth recovery is so simple that using excess is not > really a problem. > > > >David T. > > __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Finance - Get real-time stock quotes http://finance.yahoo.com ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~--> 4 DVDs Free +s&p Join Now http://us.click.yahoo.com/pt6YBB/NXiEAA/mG3HAA/9bTolB/TM ---------------------------------------------------------------------~-> Biofuels at Journey to Forever http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuel at WebConX http://www.webconx.dns2go.com/2000/biofuel/biofuel.htm List messages are archived at the Info-Archive at NNYTech: http://archive.nnytech.net/ To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
