Ok, I've seen their processor. Frankly I'm not impressed for what you have to pay for it. I found a thread on biodieselnow that girl_mark posted about the FuelMeister
As follows:
"It's NOT a great setup.
You can do the same thing for $500 or much less, without being a plumber or a mechanic, and it can take you about the same amount of time to build your own (or less, since building a system is a weekend project at most), as it will take for you to wait to get this thing shipped (see
www.veggieavenger.com/media for the real 'biodiesel solution'- open source design equipment which is quite frankly peer reviewed).
If you buy the 'full' Biodiesel Solutions FuelMeister kit - $300 for heating, $1000-$1300 for an extra wash tank, $200 for shipping (their policy on shipping changes here and there)- you have spent over $4500. Keith Addison at journeytoforever.org pointed out that for the cost of this 'full system' fuelmeister you could build a proper, safe, non-flammable metal reactor for $300, which does the same exact thing as FuelMeister claims to with the same level of ease, and then have enough money left over to pay for over 8,000 gallons of homebrew biodiesel before you 'break even'.
Contrary to the advertising in the eBay ad, It WILL NOT let you use heavily used oils as there is no way to 'dewater' heavily used oil with that system (and the instructions tell you not to use wet oil, which is certainly correct- but almost all oil will contain water and heavily used oils contain huge amounts of water which disrupts biodiesel process). Also, heavily used oil will make solid glycerol if you dont' get to draining it right away- and because there is no in-tank heat, there is no way with a FuelMeister to get that solid (methanol-filled) glycerol out without getting yourself into the tank with all it's methanol fumes and making a mess. So you either have to pay really careful attention, or you can not use heaviliy used oils (which the instructions certainly tell you not to).
The funniest part to me is where in some of their other advertising they claimed that it's 'engineered of industrial-grade materials'. That pump is a cheap consumer-grade product from China, and it costs them $25-$35 depending on the sale (
http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/cta...temnumber=1479 - now on sale for $25) that Harbor Freight Tools is having at the time, do you know that? Do you know what Harbor Freight Tools is?
the plumbing is worth about $15 of tubing, and maybe $50 in valves. The methanol pump is from Northern Tool and costs $40 (
polypropylene rotary chemical hand pump ).
Unlike what the eBay ad says, it is NOT engineered of quality materials- they're largely from Harbor Freight and US Plastics and Northern Tool, which are suppliers of very cheap materials from China. Harbor Freight is famous around the country for their low quality products- in fact, in mechanic circles, it's a synonym for 'disposable tools'.
YOu would think that for $3000-$4500, the Fuelmeister peopel could have spent a little more on quality parts, but no, that stuff is all the cheapest supplies possible. The timer (the only automatic control' the thing has) is a "Johnny Homeowner"-grade item from Home Depot (everything else is extremely manual about this system).
Plastic tanks are flammable and unsafe for biodiesel production (though many people are primed to think otherwise since From the Fryer to the Fuel Tank incorrectly recommended them early on). Fire departments frown on peopel keeping flammable fuels in plastic tanks in those kinds of quantities (biodiesel with methanol still in it is quite flammable). In our area there were several fires with the FuelMeister's predecessor, and we are lucky that no one died. Though some of the fires were caused initially by the maker's unsafe heater, the tanks went up in flames and spread burning biodiesel everywhere. Even with an unheated system, this can still happen if static causes a spark to ignite your methanol fumes, which is a remote possibility with any system and with operator error, and the flammable tanks make the resulting fire much more dangerous.
Generally people who have purchased these systems don't post on the forums about it (with the exception of Larry larson, who had some problems with it (oil backed up into his methanol tank because the FuelMeister peopel are too cheap to include a $4 check valve to prevent this, potentially overflowing methanol into his work space, and he burst a hose during biodiesel making because the design didn't take into account that someone could make a mistake that could make this hose burst). Having spent $3000 (and gotten jumped on for it online) he defends it anyway (so did one of the people whose purchased plastic reactor almost burned her house down- peopel tend to defend their decision to spend money), and so does Eric from TS Designs, who re-engineered it almost completely into something that now resembles a homebuilt metal-plumbing reactor). But no one else posts about their system, which is dangerous- they're all isolated with just Rudi from FuelMeister as their source of (bad) information. And frankly Rudi isn't a chemist, a mechanic, or an engineer - he's a marketing guy- a good one who is good at convincing peopel that what he says is true.
I've talked with quite a few people about problems they've seen with this unit 'offlist'- both experienced biodieselers, and people who are complete novices about it and are non-mechanics. Remember, I live in the same area as Rudi, I talk to locals about biodiesel all day long, and therefore know many people have gone to his 'infomercial' workshops, have actually seen it in use, and an owner or two- and who have had or have seen problems with this system. It's disturbing to me that you don't hear positive or negative user reviews of the Biodiesel Solutions Fuelmeister at any of the biodiesel forums- where are all the customers? You'd think they'd be encouraging everyone to buy this thing. The fact is, the FuelMeister manufacturers rather interestingly do not encourage their customers to join the online forums, where the product is generally disliked by most experienced biodieselers. In the local SF area, we have an extremely well-connected online biodiesel community here- the locals all know each other, and when something new comes around, you generally hear reports about it on Burnveggies list [
www.goblin.punk/net/mailman/listinfo/burnveggies ]
(for instance every few months Burnveggies gets posts from a newcomer getting all excited about buying their first diesel and joining the community, or getting their new SVO conversion kit finally finished, or making their first batch of biodiesel. generally the enthusiasm is about things that they have just purchased. So why do we not get enthusiastic online reviews of users' FuelMeister experience, when they know it would help other newcomers (the president of RealGoods, whose old testimonial is on the FuelMeister website, who happens to be a FuelMeister dealer, and Chuck from Weaverville (Dr Diesel?), who also happens to be a FuelMeister dealer, do not quite count as 'user' testimonials, since they stand to gain a bunch of money from selling the product themselves. It's like AMway or something.)
Their lye mixing system doesn't seem to do a good job of dissolving lye (which is part of the non-high-quality fuel problem it creates).
The FuelMeister instructions that I saw from one of Rudi's workshops (skimp on methanol, sniff the unwashed fuel to see if it smells strongly of methanol and then reduce the amount of methanol next time if you smell methanol [yep, they really had 'sniff it for methanol' as a 'quality test'], also the amazing instructions to open the lid of the reactor and evaporate methanol into the surrounding environment overnight) are very unlikely to either make ASTM-grade fuel (which they claim you can with their instructions) or are safe for health or environment (ie it's not really a sealed system, especially when they tell you to evaporate methanol into the air to make your washing easier).
The info about 'not needing to heat' is just plain ignorant (ie cold oil impacts mixability and therefore quality control, and some oils just dont' make good biodiesel without high heat, which that cheap tank can't take, plus lots of scientific tests show that you need to mix for 8 hours or so to get an equivalent level of 'quality' (ie conversion) as you would at 70F temperatures, which Rudi's website claims is a myth).
When confronted with this personally, Rudi now claims that he tells everybody that they DO need to heat (he's been beat up over this issue by everyone)- but the system is advertised to newbies with heat as an 'option' and the eBay ad certainly doesnt' mention heat or include a heater).
As an alternative I'm trying to convince people that they should make metal processor kits to sell (and sell them at a reasonable cost, and not include a bunch of misleading scare tactics in their advertising, and do it in partnership with the opensource biodiesel communities like biodieselnow forums). Rudi's ex-partner in the FuelMeister is one of those people.
Mark"
Not only is their system unsafe, it's damn expensive, you'll have to be cranking out thousands of gallons of fuel to break even. And as stated above biodiesel with the methanol still reacting in it is flammable.
Save your money, get a water heater and hit up Home Despot for your plumbing supplies, your pocket book will thank you.
