Yea, the gas isn't to be put in a high %'s, it was low numbers like 5-10% max 20% or something like that. Pure gas in a diesel isn't good, just like pure diesel in a gas engine.
On diesel in gas, the first thought I get is the octane rating would drop since diesel has a low octane. I had to do the search, so here's google's suggested answer.
Quote:
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Diesel fuel has an octane rating of 25-40. Mixing 2% diesel fuel into gasoline will lower the overall octane rating by 1 point. Getting 10% diesel contamination lowers octane by 5 points, which is enough to create problems in most engines.
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It's effect is a little worse than I expected (assuming google is correct). I guess the it depends, and what car/engine you have and fuel matters a lot. In my area "reg gas" is 87 octane, most "common" gas engines can run on 85 octane (California's reg gas and probably other locations). My T100 and Lexus manuals state min 87 octane, recommended is 91 octane, but they are 9:1 and higher compression.
It's a bit of a different topic, but diesels are the engine that can run on several fuels. From my understanding, fryer oil that wasn't used for animal meats can be well filtered and directly put in older diesels (mechanical injection pump style ones) as long as the fuel is heated to I think it was 180f before hand. That means it has to burn diesel on startup, and for shut down it has to have diesel ran through to clear the system. The car of choice was an 80's VW with the 1.6L diesel non-turbo. If I remember right, the mpg was better with the fryer oil and the exhaust smelled like french fries xD.
It could be interesting to tap into that idea, but at a mix instead of direct. Even at 5-10% if the fuel is free and the only cost is time + filtering a batch, it could lower fuel costs by that much. Probably a lot more work than what I'd get benefit from, but it's an interesting concept I wanted to try a long time ago. Of course, would have to bench top test the fuels first, and ideally have a small single cylinder diesel engine to test it in, or something like a VW engine with the mechanical injection pump.
I've been into so many different branches of tech, alt fuels, etc. There's a lot of neat ideas out there. I know for gas engines it's possible to burn wood as a fuel, but the areo is pretty bad, adds a lot of weight, and the engine looses something like 60% of it's power. People say the issue it burns slow in the engine, so it seems like a longer stroke engine would be more ideal, like a diesel, but I suspect the wood gas has a poor cetane number. Not really planning to take things quite that far even though I've thought about it for home heating. Wood chips are pretty common in this area, I can get truckloads for free from atleast two locations (city and a golf course). A down draft gasifier I think would be the best way to consume it as a fuel, pipe it into say the wood stove, and burn it in a burner like a propane furnace has. It would require a fan to create the movement of air. I think making a drip oil burner would be a lot easier and I know a guy that was trying to make biodiesel that got free oil locally but it had animal fats in it, so he had problems with the fuel and gave up on the idea pretty fast. He has a small fleet of diesels for a septic business.
Alt fuels can be pretty interesting. Really wood stoves are just about an alt fuel, it's just somewhat popular in this state. The trade off is manual work and tending to a fire vs paying the extra and basically forgetting about it till you get low on fuel. A side benefit, my wood stove doesn't require electricity to function, so in a winter storm and no power, I still have heat.
I'm pretty sure the ultimate dooms day vehicle would be an older diesel with a mechanical injection pump (one with no electronics). I suspect the 85 VW diesel is that way. I'm not a dooms day prepper, but some of the concepts and such are interesting. Seems like they'd look into shipping containers and grounding them, the floor is wood so not sure if that kills the effect or not.
I'm skirting around some pretty close to snake oil topics, better stop while I'm ahead xD.