Bio deisel, the future....

[4matt]

Hi Everyone,It tells me on the filler cap NOT FOR BIO DEISEL! Can anyone tell me what will happen in the comming years when they start to add more Bio Into the fuel we buy at the pumps. The govenment want to do this starting next year. Is the cars life going to be shortened because of this? Anyone with any thoughts? Forgive me if this thread repeats any others my search button isn,t working.

[tchapm]

Hi,

I would expect that whilst the government are hell bent on getting cars off the road, and people back into ploughing their own fields and tending their own crops and keeping their caves warm at the behest of the environmentalists , it would be difficult for them to suddenly affect the quality of the fuel we use daily.

All engines will have tolerances for the fuel, as different qualities of the stuff exists at different geographical locations. The standard ecu mapping of modern cars will compensate for the variances in quality, hence when they get shipped from the factory and end up in timbuktoo the car still works. If yours is re-mapped, you may have problems initially if the quality of the fuel changes even slightly - until someone clever works out how to set the mapping up to cope again; but standard cars should be ok.

Sorry for the ramble. My main point is they can't do anything which will affect the quality of the fuel for ordinary motor vehicles, without consultation and proper negotiations with the industry. (There aren't just cars to consider. There are fire trucks, medical vehicles, police cars, etc etc etc. Any change that may reduce the ability of these vehicles to operate even for a short period of time, could have significant affect on people's lives).

I think they would either have to produce a New Fuel and pump it separately (of which Biodiesel is at the moment) to the rest of the normal fuels on the forecourt; or to convert us all to biodiesel (which may happen) but they will do what they did with 4*. Just phase it out over a period of time. People then have the option then to have their car converted to cope with the new fuel, or buy a new car. But it took a number of years for this to happen in the case of 4*.

I think the reason your car has the warning on it, is that Biodiesel is at this time, being pumped separately, and your car won't work on it - in fact you would damage your engine if you put it in much like putting petrol in (although probably not as bad). You can buy cars which run specifically on biodiesel.

Of course, this is my opinion and not hard and fast fact, but I'm not worried having just ordered my new Octi TDI

Can anyone offer a different view?

[cheezemonkhai]

Bio derv isn't the future as to power the UK's cars you would need to plant enough oilseed rape to cover the whole of France!

Hang on, now there's a plan. Who's up for invading France in the name of the environment.

Hey, it's as good an excuse as we will ever get

[Babs]

Yup count me in!

[100mphplus]

Bio diesel is one possibility as there have been new methods of production developed this year that means that fields of rape don't have to be sown to produce it

One method is producing it from green algae which only needs sunlight, water and CO2. The actual algae also produce more oil per gram that rape seed too.

Second method is being developed in germany, and more importantly Mercedes and VAG have invested in the technology, where fuel oil is being produced from waste matter.

[cheezemonkhai]

What an Ironic situation.

The British are proposing to invade France and the Germans are finding new ways to not invade France.

Now there's a turn up for the books!

[Decron]

Euro 4 Skoda's all seem to have this on them.

Personally, I ignored it and am currently running 20% bio. It's running very nice and has done for the last 6k.

[Bagpuss]

It seems there are some good technical reasons why certain Octavias shouldn't run on BioDiesel. I found this out when I did some research on why my vRS TDi can't use the stuff.

Any Skoda diesel that conforms to EU2 or EU3 emissions standards can use BioDiesel. More specifically, the car could use a fuel composed entirely of rapeseed methylester (RME).

Therefore, this means that all 1.9 TDi PD engines can use it, as EU4 compliance was only introduced with the 2.0 TDi. There is one exception to this, which is the Octavia 1.9TDi 105PS engine, which also has a DPF as from 05/06 onwards.

The reason that DPF vehicles cannot use BioDiesel is because the fuel has a higher reaction temperature than normal diesel. This means that the cleaning operation on the DPF would never complete properly, as it wouldn't ever be able to get hot enough to burn off the residues left by BioDiesel.

For more information on this, check out:

http://new.skoda-auto.com/Documents/...TechDevDPF.pdf

The EU2/EU3 emissions information can be found on the Skoda Germany webpage here:

Translated version of Skoda Auto Deutschland GmbH - FAQ

Bagpuss.

[SeanP]

Cheers for the info -- your link appears broken? (It opens with the 3 dots in it, just as shown!)

[babis]

Decron, it is good to see that you are using BD20 in your car. What car is it? I have just bought a new 2007 1.9 Octavia TDI and put a 50% BD mix in it the other day. It ran fine for a few miles and when I stopped after about 10 miles it wouldn't start unless I pumped the accelerator during the start. That was a shock but it was about 4 degrees C outside so not sure if the BD gelled up. It now seems to do this intermittently when it is cold but always runs fine once started. The car has only done about 1,200 miles.

I want to switch to 100% BD (not in winter though) but I am trying to find out from various sources what actual damage will be done to the car so that I can take preventative action but no one seems to know, or they don't want to tell me, not even Skoda themselves. That's not a surprise because Ford were not very helpful either even though I ran a 2006 Ford Focus on 50% BD with no problems for about 8,000 miles.

This company, Diesel Bob Tuning - Vegetable Bob, say that 100% BD in the TDI engine would be fine. They said the Focus TDCi engine (common rail) was crap with BD and should not be used at all - that is why I sold it for the Skoda.

I would be grateful to hear from someone else who is keen to try a higher ratio and has some good experience or knowledge of using BD.

[john1804]

After many phone calls and e-mails to Skoda customer services, they finally told me that the VRS will not run on full Bio-deisel, due to extra strain on the pump and injectors. You can use a 5% mix of bio-deisel, ie normal deisel mixed with bio-deisel, which unless it offers any performance or economy advantage, won't really be worth buying as it's probably the same cost. As yet there are no plans to make Skoda deisels run on bio-deisel, guess at some point they may be forced to?????

[WW_VRS]

5% biodiesel mix should always be fine as that's the only stuff you can buy in some countries in Europe

[dannyvrs1]

After many phone calls and e-mails to Skoda customer services, they finally told me that the VRS will not run on full Bio-deisel, due to extra strain on the pump and injectors. You can use a 5% mix of bio-deisel, ie normal deisel mixed with bio-deisel, which unless it offers any performance or economy advantage, won't really be worth buying as it's probably the same cost. As yet there are no plans to make Skoda deisels run on bio-deisel, guess at some point they may be forced to?????

i have a 2004 fabia vrs and ive just started using bio diesel after using nothing but v-power diesel and it runs fine on it, even in the volkswagon manual it says that the 130pd engine is designed to run on 100% biodiesel hope this helps:thumbup:

[mikel543]

Read in the paper the other week that Tesco standard derv is 5% bio-diesel straight from the pump.

Also a law which came into force this month says that min 2.5% of diesel sales must come from crops. I think that the way the fuel companies are ensuring this is happening is to mix Bio-diesel with standard diesel.

Now my starter for 10 is, will running my VRS TDi on Tesco 5% bio derv cause issues with the DPF?

As soon as I found out I switched brands to Shell, but does anyone out there know if either shell V-Power or Diesel Extra is mixed with bio-fuel?

See article below for where I got this from. Article is actually about Tesco using Palm oil to produce Bio-diesel and destroying rain forrests in the process.

Tesco green fuel ‘adds to climate change’ - Times Online

[ednmra]

Apparently [from recent TV programme] everything in Brazil uses part- bio fuel, because they started making it out of unsold sugar when they had a glut they couldn't shift abroad.

GM put some people in there a few years back, and now Brazil is reckoned to be the world leader in bio-fuel engine technology. I got the impression it wasn't just diesel, but all vehicles.

[thurian]

Decron, it is good to see that you are using BD20 in your car. What car is it? I have just bought a new 2007 1.9 Octavia TDI and put a 50% BD mix in it the other day. It ran fine for a few miles and when I stopped after about 10 miles it wouldn't start unless I pumped the accelerator during the start. That was a shock but it was about 4 degrees C outside so not sure if the BD gelled up. It now seems to do this intermittently when it is cold but always runs fine once started. The car has only done about 1,200 miles.

I want to switch to 100% BD (not in winter though) but I am trying to find out from various sources what actual damage will be done to the car so that I can take preventative action but no one seems to know, or they don't want to tell me, not even Skoda themselves. That's not a surprise because Ford were not very helpful either even though I ran a 2006 Ford Focus on 50% BD with no problems for about 8,000 miles.

This company, Diesel Bob Tuning - Vegetable Bob, say that 100% BD in the TDI engine would be fine. They said the Focus TDCi engine (common rail) was crap with BD and should not be used at all - that is why I sold it for the Skoda.

I would be grateful to hear from someone else who is keen to try a higher ratio and has some good experience or knowledge of using BD.

Hi,my Octi2 gave some serious starting probs in first couple of thousand k but cured itself and since then no probs (now 95000km on board) and using regular diesel so your start probs are probably nothing to do with using bio diesel.

[Nick P]

Apparently [from recent TV programme] everything in Brazil uses part- bio fuel, because they started making it out of unsold sugar when they had a glut they couldn't shift abroad.

GM put some people in there a few years back, and now Brazil is reckoned to be the world leader in bio-fuel engine technology. I got the impression it wasn't just diesel, but all vehicles.

Yeah, they run bio-ethonol.

[muunster]

5% bio diesel is not just sold in tesco pumps , but all low sulpher diesel in uk is at least 5% bio , all main fuel suppliers are required to produce this as a token gesture green commitment .