Us three brothers have been interested in biofuels for quite a while now. I think it's the thought of getting free stuff that compelled us to be keen about biofuels. I remember discussing biodiesel with Adrian when we first found out about it- "Wow, how good would that be?- you could run your car for FREE!"
We initially looked into it, and saw that you needed methanol to complete the biodiesel reaction, and for some stupid reason, decided that since Methanol costs about $1 a litre, it would not be economically viable..(I think the price of diesel was around 90c back then).
We revisited it a couple of years later, and realised that in fact you only require 20% methanol in the biodiesel reaction, and having seen the diesel price rise to more than $1.30 a litre.. A methanol source was found, and it was realised that methanol can be bought for around $1 a litre.
This basically means that if we could get free waste oil from fish and chip shops, we could make a litre of biodiesel for 20c a litre!
So the first problem was: If we go and make a million litres of biodiesel, what are we going to test it in? We don't have a vehicle with a diesel engine that we would be willing to put possibly dodgy home made diesel fuel.
Our current cars at the time were : Adrian had a nice new diesel navara, and i had a 1.6l petrol 1976 golf...
A quick look on the web found that MK1 golfs actually came out with diesel engines.. They were a 1.5l Naturally aspirated engine, putting out 37kW ( a reduction in power compared to the petrol engine)..
I figured that if i could find one for fairly cheap, i could whack it into the golf, and Voila, i would have a test bed for the biodiesel project.
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