Maybe a kernel of truth?


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Posted by Sherman in Idaho [24.32.202.166] on Wednesday, May 22, 2013 at 13:29:20 :

In Reply to: biogasoline posted by clueless [201.202.29.210] on Wednesday, May 22, 2013 at 11:09:27 :

Maybe the "bioifuel" guys had a diesel engine. That would make sense. But not any kind of vegetable oil in a gasoline engine, no matter what it was mixed with. In a spark-ignition engine, the fuel has to evaporate before it can burn. Alcohol can evaporate. Cooking oil can't unless it hits something that's already really hot (which is the principle of the spherical pocket in the top of the pistons of a military "hypercycle" multifuel engine). Of course as always, don't believe me. Try it. I suspect you'll end up with cylinders full of cooking oil and no fire in the holes, but switching back to real gas should clean it out.

On the dead batteries, I can sort of attest to that. We usually junk a battery when it is "sulfated", which is to say the lead and acid have reacted and formed lead sulfate that covers the plates and the bottoms of the cells and does not participate in the reaction needed to make electricity. When you put a sulfated battery on a conventional charger it won't "take a charge". When you test the electrolyte with a hydrometer, it is just water (all the acid went into the lead sulfate). I've found that I can usually eke some more life out of a sulfated battery by connecting it to a variable-voltage charger, cranking up the voltage until it starts to draw some current (which might take 30-40 volts for a 12 volt battery), and then watching it closely for the first 1/2 hour or so, turning down the voltage as needed to keep the current around 5 amps. Usually I can get it down to where it will draw 5 amps at 14-15 volts. I'll leave it at that current for a week, checking now and then to see if it needs more water added. I can also get some more life out of a sulfated battery by adding straight acid to the cells. This works because there is an excess of lead on the plates so even if all the acid has gotten used up making lead sulfate, and you can't get it back into lead, some extra acid will make use of the remaining lead. So, it's possible that if they start with old sulfated batteries, with nothing but water in them, and charge the bejesus out of them, they will turn enough sulfate into sufuric acid to make them work. At that point, though, a hydrometer would show that there is indeed acid in the cells.



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