Whats the story with biodiesel eating paint?

[Reno Speedster]

I saw a comment on another thread about biodiesel eating paint.  I hadn't heard this before.  Could someone elaborate on it?

Morgan

[quinnf]

Hi Morgan,

The common process of converting waste fry oil involves removing glycerine from the triglyceride molecule, which is what vegetable and animal oils are largely composed of, and converting it to a straight chain hydrocarbon, similar to petroleum oils.  In order to do that, usually sodium methoxide or potassium methoxide is used to strip off the glycerol.  Any excess sodium hydroxide that remains in the fuel will eventually peel the paint off anything it touches. 

If biodiesel is well made, the sodium hydroxide will be neutralized in the final washing step, however many people just dump it in their fuel tank as soon as the oil has been separated from glycerine.

There's lots of good information here:  http://www.journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_make.html#process

Quinn

[Stevels]

Having a senior moment, I can not recall where, but I remember seeing a picture of a Listeroid's paint totally eaten by spilled BioDiesel.  If I can find the picture, I will post or link it. It is worth 1000 words. 
My advice: don't paint anything and you be sloppy with your biodeisel 

[Tom]

Georges lister longevity CD has a pic of a leaky fuel filter with the paint bubbled up. Is that the one you're thinking of?

[Doug]

I think I read somewhere the Methel-ester (fancy word probably miss spelled) that are produced form the conversion of veg to bio will attack some types of Rubber so I'm not sure its such a stretch to think it may desolve some paint.

Doug

[johnny williams]

I've been burning home brewed bio-diesel in my engine and it still has all of it's original paint. Smells better to.