Chile Forum

I have run a diesel car on recycled cooking oil in the UK for some time, saving (a) planet (b) wallet
Some time ago I found one Chilean in Santiago on a veg. oil forum who was trying to get started on making biodiesel but nothing more. As everywhere his biggest problem was getting hold of sources.
With fuel around 500-600 CLP could be worth doing especially in a 4x4 (Particulary thinking Musso as the engine is ideal).
Is there any biofuel use in Chile? Either using waste vegetable oil (WVO) in converted cars or made into biodiesel. I know ethanol for petrol engines is big in Brazil.
If WVO doesn't get used in Chile then where does it go?

I read in Diario El Dia (La Serena area newspaper) a few days ago that they're starting a jatropha plantation up here in region 4 to make biodiesel. Sounded like a good idea--using desert-adapted plants in an arid zone that would take a lot more water to irrigate for food crops.

Thats interesting. There is quite a bit in India. As you say say Jatropha will grow in arid areas and AFAIK it has about the highest yield of oil. Causes much less damage than palm oil (only makes warm summer bio anyway).
I believe biodiesel from jatropha feedstock clouds at about 5C and the cold filter plugging point is about 1C. So I guess OK above 5-10C unless its blended / treated.
Hope its based on sound advice / funding, there were plenty of get rich quick biofuel schemes a while ago when fuel was soaring in price.
Wonder if they get tax breaks etc from Government and what their pump price per litre will be? It has to be cheaper than diesel or nobody will buy, everyone makes the right noises about saving the planet but its all down to the wallet in the end.
A lot of UK bio businesses are struggling at the moment and their feedstock is mainly waste oil.

I looked up the article again--it's in the Feb. 6th paper of Diario el Dia Online if you want to go look at it--it seems to be part of a pilot project by INIA and Corfo (?) to see how jatropha plantations would work out in this region, and it implies that for biodiesel you don't have to pay the petroleum fuels tax, so it should be quite a bit cheaper. A quick look around the web showed a few more articles about jatropha biofuels in the north, public and private ventures trying to or thinking about starting up, and a jatropha-fueled power plant recently operating in Peru. Seems to have become trendy in the past year or so.

"Griffin" and "Veg", I want to thank you both for posting about the subject. I know little about it and so, likely, will not post further myself but will follow with interest -- and will try to find the webpage for the article in El Día.

griffin,
thanks for that. I had a trawl through the Diario el Dia back articles, not sure if this is the one you meant:-

http://www.diarioeldia.cl/index.php?opt ... Itemid=162

It seems to be about trials growing the plant.
The oil extracted from jatropha although a biofuel can only be used in specially converted engines / generators. For general use in diesel vehicles it needs to undergo a chemical reaction to convert it to biodiesel. This often gets glossed over in these biofuel articles.
To make biodiesel they will also need to source methanol or maybe ethanol. 20% methanol mixed with sodium hydroxide catalyst is reacted with the oil. In simple production 20% glycerol ( can be a pain to get rid of for small producers ) is also produced as a waste product although I believe this can be cracked / processed to extract more fuel on an industrial scale.

Hmm, that's not the exact article I saw, but it does contain a lot of the same information. I think it must have been from an earlier paper. Here's what I was looking at :
http://papeldigital.eldia.la/index.php/ ... ook_id=148

I can see you know quite a bit more about biofuels than I do--I have a lot of science education but no specific knowledge in this area, just a general interest in alternative energy. It's been interesting learning a little more about the practical issues involved.

Thanks griffin,
it looks like an update. No fuel duty looks interesting, bet that won't last if it takes off though.
The pricing looks optimistic, but notice it doesn't say if this refers to the raw oil or finished biodiesel. My guess is this is a raw oil price going by prices elsewhere.
Best way to pitch it to government is on breaking reliance on imported fuel rather than straight economics.

griffin and RWS,
don't worry about lack of knowledge on biofuels. I think most people in the UK got started from scratch, its one of those underground things. Main thing is it needs time and effort to get started, there is more good info about on the net now as well. I got going buying lots of veg. oil bottles from the supermarket but later managed to find some waste oil sources at pub restaurants
I have an older car that will run on unconverted veg. oil, don't try this in a modern computer controlled engine or it will end in tears. WELL MADE biodiesel should be okay though ( check manufacturer's data to be sure, car makers are really cagy about alternative fuels and warranties ).
Having got used to running on cheap fuel ( and avoiding get stiffed by big oil and fuel duty ) I was wondering if there was any chance to do the same in Chile.

It would seem to me, if you go to any market in Chile you could easily convince all the restaurants to save their oil for you. They like to fry food in Chile, and that stuff just goes to waist. If you say gave them say 1,000 pesos a week to collect their old oil, you would easily find sufficient to drive a car. Figure there at least 20 to 30 restaurants or stalls in any given market that fry food. That is got to be like 20 gallons or more a day. Just leave them whatever type of container you want them to put it in.

admin,
yea, thats what I had in mind to try and do, pretty much same as here. Some I pay a bit to keep their loyalty others I spend money at now and then so everyone gets something. As a bonus you get to meet some weird and wonderful people while looking for oil.
Would love to do some road trips and explore Chile. The boss is also keen, although Chilena she has only seen a small part of Chile. Couple of lads on the veg forum decided to see proper snow for Christmas, put a 1000l IBC of oil in the back of a van, got on the ferry and drove to Tromso!
I'm only a beginner at this, some of the hard core veg collectors/users fuel a CHP setup (usually based on a Lister clone) for house heat and power as well as car.

G'day allchileans... same topic, different place.
wanna see something absolutely, astoundingly moronic
now g~j and others have been cognizant of this fiasco for some time...
but look - now from (gasp!) the washingtontimes!
one of the bastions of MSM...
swallow this one - try not to choke on it.

(in part)...
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/feb/16/obamas-green-power-builds-chinas-red-power/print/

...using food crops to make biofuels was “absolute madness.”

The epicenter of that madness is the U.S. corn-ethanol sector. This year, it will consume 40 percent of all U.S. corn - that’s about 15 percent of global corn production or 5 percent of all global grain - in order to produce a volume of motor fuel with the energy equivalent of about 0.6 percent of global oil needs.

Congress lavishes about $7 billion in annual subsidies, mandates and tariff protections upon an industry that is helping push global food prices to all-time highs and shrink grain reserves at the very same time that global grain production is faltering and protests over food prices are becoming common.

The quantity of grain to be consumed this year for ethanol production - 4.9 billion bushels - boggles the mind. That’s more than twice as much as all the corn produced in Brazil and more than six times as much as is grown in India. Put another way, that’s more corn than the output of the European Union, Mexico, Argentina and India combined.

Despite these facts, President Obama said last month in his State of the Union speech, “We can break our dependence on oil with biofuels.”...

read the whole article folks...
kinda boggles the mind, eh?

hey... see all those "revolting people" in the middle east and north africa...
wanna know where another revolution is really~truly~sorely needed?
(rhetorical, of course - we all know the answer)

...their eyes filled with confusion, whimpering the question, "Why?"...
When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies?
Perhaps to be too practical is madness.
To surrender dreams — this may be madness.
To seek treasure where there is only trash.
Too much sanity may be madness — and maddest of all:
To see life as it is, and not as it should be! -
Miguel de Cervantes, from Man of La Mancha

greg~judy wrote:wanna know where another revolution is really~truly~sorely needed?

You get upset when I suggest that. Or is it that I insist that they bring back the guillotine this time?