Touareg R5 and Biodiesel

[Transporter]

Dude, unless you've been a lifelong vegetarian like me, get off your high horse about the environment. It's an easily proven fact that the impact of beef cattle is immense compared to anything you can do with a car or emissions. I dare you to have a look into it.

I figure you have a LOT of catching up to do before you can throw stones at this glass house.

I'm not money waster, I don't eat meat and I don't think that many people can afford to rebuild engine every two years. These who can usually don't care about environment and buy car with cash. Don't get me wrong I don't like to give my money to oil oil companies that's why I always drive economical car and I wish one day somebody invents something that we don't need them at all.

P.S. Are you going to delete DPF from you car?
Most pollution is from the human activity but it is known fact that countries with good lifestyle like us are responsible. We grow and consume most of the food in the world. Ruining your engine on biodiesel will not help to environment, so don't bother with that solar. Car manufacturers will like you when you will be buy a lots of spare parts for your engine rebuild.
Yeah, go biodiesel.

[Greg Roles]

Ok fair enough. Each to their own. Now back to the TOPIC before I get in trouble with mods again....

[passatpout]

Good stuff Neil, I'm in, do you know how it compares against mineral diesel in terms of energy density? My dad used to think it was more dense, though reading your comparison in terms of fuel consumption perhaps it isn't? But perhaps it's due to optimisation for mineral diesel???

Now I have just have to find somewhere in Brissy that sells the stuff......

Greetings, swinging over from the Passat room for a gander..

Biodiesel was the subject of my final year engineering project about 10 years ago, which pre-dates DPF, as well as the implementation of the newer Euro standards. I've had an ongoing interest in it since.

First up, when Rudolf Diesel first patented and demonstrated the Diesel engine, it operated on peanut oil. He intended it to be a versatile engine capable of operating on a variety of combustible fuels - depending on what was the cheapest for the operator/owner at the time.

Second, from memory the main issue with biodiesel on older cars were that the biodiesel is more acidic and tends to eat away at the rubber used on fuel lines, etc.

Third up, the energy density of biodiesel is reduced compared to petro-diesel - about 38MJ/l compared to 41MJ/l. This increases consumption and reduces performance in a similar manner as a petrol car converted to operate on LPG.

Fourth, biodiesel combusts at higher temperatures (resulting in increased nitrogen oxide emissions), but can also tolerate increased compression ratios and has a slower flame front propogation than petro-diesel. As a result of this, engines tuned to operate on biodiesel can overcome some of the limitations of the lower energy content.

As an aside, I now work in the rail industry. Particularly in Europe, there is quite an interest in operating rail vehicles on biodiesel, and quite a few trials have been conducted to compare engine performance, consumption and emissions. Virgin Atlantic airlines also operated a 747 with one engine operating on biodiesel, and stated at the time that the biodiesel-fuelled engine was capable of supplying 20% of the plane's energy/power requirements - they didn't mention where they'd mount the fifth engine if the whole plane was operated on it.

As a visitor to this side of the forum, I also have my thoughts on some of the comments and snide attacks in here.. remember, play the ball, not the person..

Cheers,
PassatPout

(Yes, it's a TDI. No, I haven't run it on biodiesel).