Unless you have a source of very cheap and very plentiful veg oil, it is cost prohibitive to burn veg oil for fuel. The crude soybean oil market (one of the cheapest and most plentiful sources of veg oil) closed at .61 per pound today. That equates to 4.27 per gallon.
Ive seen a bunch of guys do it, and am currently looking into doing it myself. Check out www.frybrid.com they have everything you need. What people dont understand about the system is that if you filter used Vegetable Oil ( which anyplace with a fryer produces gallons of the stuff per day) it is all free. Its worth looking at.
I read someplace that last year one of the NASCAR drivers was running used fryer oil in his motorhome and was fined a couple of thousand dollars for not paying a fuel tax for driving it over the road. What a country!
You pay road tax with every gallon of fuel you buy. If I, you, your neighbor pay, then why shouldn't EVERYONE pay that tax? As much as I hate taxes, fuel tax is the fairest tax. If you don't want to pay it, drive less. Buy him not paying taxes, those who do pay taxes (like me!) are forced, without choice, to subsidizing his tax responsibility. **** that!
Eventually these guys who turn used french fry oil into diesel fuel will run out of Burger Kings and McDonalds who will give them free oil. I guess it's kind of a neat gimmick for a few months. There sure isn't enough used french fry oil out there to power even 1% of the country. If you have to pay for the vegetable oil, it's not going to be a good deal for anyone. I wonder what the long term effect on these people's engines who use that stuff is? It probably clogs up all the injectors and fuel filters eventually -- then it probably won't seem like such a great deal anymore. Have you seen how black and ugly vegetable oil looks after they get around to throwing it out from a fast food place? They filter it several times until it looks like black sludge and turns the french fries dark brown, and then they give up on it and get rid of it.
I have a buddy who is currently doing it-- It comes out to an honest $1.00 per gallon. It's an involved process to actually distill the used fryer oil into biodiesel, but it is completely non-toxic- and will run directly in place of regular diesel. --doesn't clog your injectors- that's the reason for distilling it.
"Eventually these guys who turn used french fry oil into diesel fuel will run out of Burger Kings and McDonalds who will give them free oil." After the burger guys see the TV show - it's not free anymore. $1. a gallon? But they spent several hours making 20 gallons, including finding it, picking it up, load/unload, power to distill, storage, filter, wash your clothes, blah. What will those distiller set-ups sell for on eBay when the burger guys charge $1.00 per gallon? Sounds like a second job rather than a way to save money.
My cousin runs straight WVO (waste vegetable oil) in his wifes Volkswagen. Filters it twice, then straight into the extra tank he installed in the car. Starts the car on real diesel, then when the engine reaches a certain operating temprature, switches to the WVO tank. The car runs and performs fine on straight WVO. Before turning the car off he switches back to real diesel to purge the system. He gets his WVO for free from two Chinese restaurants in his neighborhood. I would love to try doing this but I am too F'n lazy!
Your neighbor is greasecar.com I saw their site and was wondering about the extra tank. I think they said you use diesel to start and shut off the engine. I was wondering why? and what do you have to do to the oil to filter the oil? get it ready to burn?
Myth Busters tried this and only filtered the oil. Car ran fine and only lost a couple of miles per gallon.
my neighbor owns one of those places its called deep fried rides. the truck he drives is a new F250 and he runs the actual vegetable oil after filtering it through NAPA hydrolic filters. he told me that he cranks the truck up on the diesel and when it reaches a certain temp he will flip the switch and it will run on the vegetable oil. and as far as the oil he has more than he can use now 500 gallon tank at his house and 3 2000 gallon tanks at his shop. people keep calling him wanting him to pick their oil up because they have to pay somebody to get rid of it and he'll take it for free. he went to a conference for "grease vehicles" in colorado last year and told me it only cost him $20 in fuel to get there and back and we are in tennessee!! plus when he drives by the house it smells like a Kentucky fried chicken.
I've researched this in detail since mid year 07. The company I work for is converting 30 trucks, mostly ***mins Diesels, a couple Cats and a Mercedes, and all of our heavy equipment. It's like anything else, if you pay attention and educate yourself it works out pretty well. Our per gallon cost of used oil after pickup, cleaning and dewatering is around $1.50. We can buy cleaned oil ready to burn for right around $2.00 a gallon in bulk. Around here petro diesel is at $3.40-3.60 a gallon, so worth it for us. One of the best kits on the market comes from Plant Drive in Berkeley, CA. DB Fleet in Dallas, TX does big rigs and regular pickups as well. There are other good ones, but a lot of not so good also. Educate yourself before diving in and you will be fine. PM me if you want more info.
i've got 3 years on my veggie suburban,and i have a mercedes i'm converting and i also run it in my forklift,and my ***mins pickup. i just filter it and drive.. Randy
The trans-esterfication process to convert waste veggie oil into Bio-Diesel acrually uses a very toxic inhalation hazard, MEth-oxide (methonol and sodium hydroxide). Please educate yourself before spreading mis-information. I run B20 Bio-Diesel in my ***mins, occasionally I run B-100 when the price and weather is right
Mc ****ing Donalds sells it. They have never given it away. it's a huge part of soaps and cosmetics. To make fuel from burnt and filthy cooking oil is dead easy,just mix methanol and caustic soda with the oil,let it settle until it's clear and you have both clear oil to run a diesel on and a great hand cleaner made from the sludge in the bottom.. Been there and done it .
The PRODUCT is non-toxic, correct? that is, after all, what we've been discussing. Incidentally- methyl alcohol is just a solution to carry the actual catalyst- and only a few ounces of the solution/ per gallon of oil are needed to produce biodiesel. By the way- I believe that "methonol" is actually spelled with an "a"-- that being "methanol".
but it may not lubricate stuff either, thats what can break injection pumps, also the new diesel fuel pressure it about 200 psi. It may not be able to keep up with that either. If its a new TDI car ( not big trucks I dont know anything about them ) its going to ruin something expensive.
Keep in mind, the Burger guys are currently Paying to have the oil removed and disposed of, by giving it away they are getting a deal.
VO [veggie oil] is not Bio-diesel,,, but Bio-d can be made out of VO. It can be made out of almost any organic substance for that matter, but that's another topic. When VO is converted into bio-d, it's done via a process called transesterfication. In it's simplest explination, Lye and methanol are mixed together and then stirred into VO. The VO molecuule is what's called a tri-gliceride, where 3 glycerine molecules are bonded to 1 carbon molecule. The lye "shocks" one of the glycerine molecules loose, and bonds with it. Then a methanol molecule takes the place of the missing glycering. The glycerine and lye fall to the bottom, and the bio-d rise to the top. Now this is the important part. Pay attention to this. Any loose glycerine that does not bond to the lye and settle to the bottom, will eventually bond with loose methanol and tiny water droplets to form soap. This soap needs to be washed out of the bio-diesel before it is ready to use, otherwise it can damage the engine. *What's more, after the VO is transformed into bio-d, it must them be filtered, and de-watered. *The lye/methanol mixture is toxic, caustic, and explosive... People have been killed working with this stuff! *Because Bio-d is a denser oil than straight diesel fuel, it will gel up at temps below 30* F. *The ingreedients [lye and methanol] required to make bio-d will run aprox. $1.20 per gallon of bio-d produced. *If you start with 100 gallons of VO, you end up with 80 gallons of bio-diesel and 20 gallons of sludge that must be disposed of. Some states are beginning to label this sludge as hazardous waste which must be labeled, and disposed of properly. $$$$$$$$ *Since bio-d is a fuel, many states require you to obtain a fuel production and distribution license. $$$$$$$$$ OK, so lets say you have just produced a batch of bio-diesel. After all the dangers and expenses I'v listed above, you have paid all the taxes, taken all the risks, bought and handled all the expensive and dangerous chemicals, disposed of all the sludge, washed, de-watered, and filtered it, and now you have 80 gallons of bio-d!!!! Your ready to pour it into your fuel tank and hit the road!!! Not so fast there Buddy!!! Because there's more! *The methanol in the bio-d will eat away and disolve the rubber fuel lines and seals in the diesel fuel system. In order to run bio-d all the time, you must replace all these seals and lines with "chemical resistant" Viton-rubber...... Dont believe me? Call the ford dealership. Ford says 5% bio-d MAX mixed in with the regular diesel fuel, or your warranty is void. Dodge and GM says 10% max. OK, so you shell out $1000 to have a mechanic rebuild your fuel system, lift pump, and injection pump with viton seals and lines.... All right!!! Lets burn some bio-diesel now! Nope!!!!!!! Remember above when I said that bio-d will gel below 30*? So after all that hard work, you can only run 100% bio-d for 7 or 8 months out of the year. The rest of the time, you must blend, or run straight diesel fuel. ******Then, after you overcome ALL of the above problems, once your 80 gallons of bio-d is used up, you have to start over and make a new batch. Now I hope you were paying attention to all that, because I just gave you the condensed version of 101 reasons why VO is better than Bio-diesel. Now I'm going to condense the 101 reasons in favor of VO. As staed above, when you use bio-d, you must modify the fuel every time. But if you use straight veggie oil, you modify the engine only 1 time. A diesel engine will burn almost any oil you can think of. *used motor oil *used ATF *Veggie oil *home heating oil *Baby oil [dont ask] The "problem" is that the diesel engine in a car or truck is "tuned" to burn diesel fuel. You must re-tune it to burn VO. VO is much thicker than diesel fuel, so the solution is to heat the VO to 160* F, so it thins itself out to the consistancy of diesel fuel, and will therefore p*** thru the fuel system [which is tuned for diesel fuel] exactly like diesel. This is acomplished by taping into the cars [trucks] cooling system, and running what is called a HIH heat exchanger. [Hose In Hose], as illustrated by the picture below. Next, a heated filter is required, like this one: And finally a series of valves is required to switch between diesel fuel and VO.... You [always] start and stop the engine on regular diesel fuel, and only run VO once it's warmed up. If your only using your diesel for short trips, the "savings" er less, but the further you drive, the greater your savings. I for example, drive a diesel delivery truck cross-country. My current record for a single trip is 1400 miles per single gallon of diesel fuel. Here is a typical instalation using a pair of 3 way valves. Notice the 2 fuel tanks, 1 for diesel, 1 for VO. Notice the fuel return line is "looped" to return fuel back into the fuel line after tha valves, instead of returning it to the tank. Why run 2 valves when you only need one to switch between tanks you ask? Good question. Remember I said you must always stop and start the engine on diesel? The second valve is used when you shut the engine down so you can "flush" or "purge" all of the VO out of the engine. Now pay attention here, because this part is important to know about the down side of VO!!! Because the VO is thicker than diesel, if you try and start a cold engine on VO, it will not atomize properly at the injector. This can keep the engine from starting at all on very cold days. What's more, the cold VO will "wash down" the cylinder walls, and mix with the lubricating oil in the crank-case........ This is VERY bad, because VO and motor oil are NOT compatable!!! When VO mixes with motor oil, it does something called "polymerize", that is, it turns into a form of natural latex rubber. This turns the motor oil into a sludge that resembles mayonaise that will not lubricate, and will destroy the engine...... Now, dont get excited. It does not happen overnight. But the general rule of thumb is that if your burning VO, you should cut your oil change intervals in half... Instead of changing it every 6000 miles, it should be done every 3000. If you start the cold engine on VO, that interval should be shortrened to every 1000 miles. Overall, it's a small price to pay to run on fuel that's nearly free,,, which brings up the next topic. How free is free fuel? There are companies, called "renderers", that collect used VO from restaurants. Sometimes these renderers pay the restaurants for the VO, sometimes they pick it up for free, and sometimes they charge them to haul it away. There dont seem to be any hard and fast rules to this. I'v seen 3 restaurants side by side on the same street. 1 will pay to have it hauled off, one is free, and the third is paid for their oil... If you want oil, ASK! Simple as that. If your told no, ask next door. Once you get your hands on some used VO, you have to prepare it [or process it] before it can be used in your diesel engine. Veggie oil is "hydroscopic", which means that it absorbs moisture. This water must be removed. Used VO contains tiny particles of food. These must be filtered out. Sometimes, used VO will have a high "Ph", or acidic contamination, from the restaurants cleaning their fryers, and dumping the cleaners out into the VO dumpster. These acids must be "washed out" with water in a process called "mist washing". In a nutshell, the simplest and most effective method to process used VO is called a "still", that uses an old water heater. The water heater is filled with VO, and is then turned on, brought up to temp [180*] and turned off. The slow cooling process causes the waters, acids, and contaminates to fall to the bottom couple inches, leaving the top 4-5 feet of the water heater with good clean VO. It's then pumped thru a filter [Racor 1000 is industry standard] into your vehicles fuel tank. If you want to persue this further, check out www.frybrid.com Go to the forum section, and read EVERYTHING!!!. Especially the "diagrams" and "reference materials" sections. Frybrid is owned by a guy named Chris Goodwin, and a lot of people dont like him,,,, but he has [hands down] the best info on the net, and he sells the best conversion kits on the planet. Other sites you can check out are: www.greasecar.com but that site is trolled by a lot of immature jerks www.biodiesel.infopop.cc and click on the veg-oil forums, but that site is a little advanced for a newbie. As for my personal expirence, I own a 24 foot box-delivery truck. I have "on board" collection, filtration, and processing equipment, and I can hold a max of 300 gallons of VO at any one time. I'v driven 130,000+ miles on VO, and I'v never ever had a fuel related problem that could be attributed to VO...... But I did my homework and designed my system right from the start!
haha. its funny around here some times. how can most of you guys respect the past so much , and have total disreguard for the future of automobiles. Cars are never gana be as cool as they were back in the day, get over it. Enjoy your old tin and stop showing your ***es everytime you dont agree with someone...the **** is old!..
Biodiesel????' WHY-- Next they'll come out with a magic talkin' box that plays words and music from outta the thin air!!!
Several guys on thedieselplace.com run bio, the GM trucks with the 6.2 lend themselves to easy conversions. One key to running well on it is to preheat it in the tank.
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