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My diesel automobile could easily run biodiesel refined from old fry grease from the McDonald's down the street if only Uncle Sam would shove Big Oil out of the way and let it be refined.

Never mind that you (yes, you!) can get a permit for small-scale biodiesel production.

Also, you don't even have to refine it! Get a $795 kit from greasecar, a $1200 kit from greasel (bad idea) or a $1100 kit from Elsbett (best idea, if you have the money) and you can run on vegetable oil. You only need [bio]diesel for startup and shutdown, and if you get the Elsbett kit, you can put whatever fuel including WVO into the same tank and start up on it, too.

Biodiesel costs about $0.25/gallon if you make it yourself. Deacidifying and dewatering average fryer oil costs about $0.05/gallon. WVO has about 85% the energy of biodiesel, so you will get less power/mileage on oil, but it's cheaper, and easier. You can, however, build a biodiesel processor for around $600.

I have a 1981 Mercedes 300SD and plan to get the Elsbett kit, which is spoken of very highly everywhere I've seen a reference.

Maybe we could power the fuel cell producing plants by burning soybean oil in modified disel generators?

What you need is a Bio Oil Diesel system. See the below link for all your needs. It's available today! http://www.greasel.com/

If you're interested, it was the 6.5 gallon kit from Greasel

Oh, and greasel.com

there's an outfit in Missouri called Greasel that makes conversion kits so you can run your vehicle on straight vegetable oil without converting it to biodiesel [no methylation step].

One of the cool things they sell is the the fuel line heater kit, known as the Triple Bypass.

The Citroen would be a much better choice, since you could convert it to run on grease, which you can get for free.

This will let you make biodiesel in small batches and run straight veggie most of the time, saving time and money.

I'd imagine that you may be running a TDI (which are great for veggie), so TDI Club is another great site to check out.

Have fun saving money on fuel and smelling like fried foods. I hope to join you once I've saved enough money to pick up a TDI wagon.

Why let someone else do it when you can follow in the footsteps of our hunter-gatherer ancestors?

As for gasoline being a tame fuel, remember that a single cup of it explodes with the power of a stick of dynamite. How many cups in a 50 litre fuel tank? It seems safe to normal people because they use it every day. People are scared of hydrogen because of explosions: pfah!

As for supplying the energy for electric vehicles, there is also hydro-electricity and wind power which are now widely used. Moreover, a coal-fired electric power plant is more efficient than most (if not all) vehicle power plants. Even if coal replaced gasoline through our electric network, environment would be winning.

All that said, I think waste veggie oil is the fuel of the future. A recycled product, does not pollute, and smells good to boot!

Corn based fuel is a reality. Well, soybean, canola, and corn.

The outdated notion that conservationism means shivering in the dark is pure FUD. I was born in an earth-sheltered, passive solar home. We had electric heat and hot water, and our yearly energy bills (in the 80s) was around $300. Instead of building a house that presented four big sides to the cold of winter and heat of summer, three sides of the house were buried in the ground, meaning it stayed 50 degrees in most of the rooms without heat or A/C!

The pipe to our hot water heater ran through a large barrel that was painted black. When the sun hit this, it preheated the water on sunny days. Sure we still needed electricity when it was cloudy, but it worked well and cost about $50 to build.

I'm saddened to see that slashdotters are so closed minded when it comes to hacking their homes to save themselves money. Why should we, the independent minded subculture, live in tract homes and eat at fast food restaurants like everyone else.

Why not drive a hybrid, or a TDI burning veggie? Why not live in a house built to save money and conserve natural resources? Why not switch to TFTs and turn your damn computer off at night? These things, while they cost a lot in the beginning, save money in the long run, or cost the same as shelling out $40K for an SUV and then whining when gas goes up to $3/gallon.

If more people bought environmentally responsible products, the cost would go down. This is what you capitalists are always harping about! Now you say being environmentally responsible is too expensive? Not if enough people do it.

Thinking different isn't just for Mac users, everyone can benefit by questioning tradition.

With gas prices coming to an all-time high, the improvement in mileage sounds a helluva lot more attractive than the improvement in horsepower.

Of course, I'm a commie pinko hippie tree-hugger who wants a TDI to burn fry oil in. Mmmm... french fries.

Use vegetable oil instead. Similar energy/mass ratio, easily transportable, easily produceable, and adds no additional carbon to the air.

TDI have alot of touque. HP for show and Tourque for go :)

The VWVortex had a week long look at TDI technology

Diesel engines have been proven in europe.

Europe mandated the use of low sulfur. So their diesel engines generate more HP/Torque.

Here in north america, low sulfur diesel will be mandated in 2007 see http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/servicerpt/ulsd/prefac e.html

Another advantage to diesel engines is that you can run different types of diesel.

1) Biodiesel. see http://www.biodiesel.org/resources/faqs

2) 100% biomater Biomater can be Vegitible oil or processed animal fats(roadkill and stuff that can't be processed in meat production)

3) Diesel

In fact you can go to KFC and get your fuel there
Greasel sells conversion kits for diesels http://www.greasel.com/

Anywho... Checkout VW's diesel spec sheet http://www.vw.com/art/engines/complete_specs_TDI.p df and checkout the flash

GREASEL! Get an old Mercedes and convert it to veggie, man. You can convert any diesel, so you could get a Jetta TDI and convert it, or a 7.4L Ford Pickup. I have been looking at this for my second car, and a vegetable powered Mercedes seems like an awesome idea.

I use dio-diesel in my old VW rabbit pickup and get over 60 miles per dollar. For a $600 investment in a SVO kit, the fuel becomes free ... I am saving up.

best info good kit good kit best kit best book

Good point, but you ignores some important points. Fossil fuels (especially oil) are running out. It is important to have a clear energy path to continue to develop. The oil crises led to an initial flurry to find alternate energy sources, but since the early 1980s this has mostly died down.

There are good alternatives to conventional fuels that require little or no change to existing infrastructure. A good example is biofuels and fuels like greasel, which can be used in existing motor vehicles with only minor modifications. Incomes and employment in farming communities can be increased by producing biofuels. The production of renewable energy generators is more labour-intensive than fossil fuel extraction, which is mostly capital-intensive. Employment will greatly benefit. Renewable energy is cleaner and is far less of a health risk to people. Pollution-related illnesses can be dramatically reduced, lessening the strain on the health system and saving billions. Billions more can be saved by not propping-up uncompetitive fossil fuel companies with subsidies and by not having to maintain such a large miltary presence globally to protect energy supplies. Households and corporations will be able to generate their own power, giving them more latitude over their usage and preventing any large-scale energy disasters (like what California has been having). This is good for business.

I could go on, but you should get my point now. Renewable energy is not only cleaner, it is also better in the long-run economically. It may be initially difficult to switch to alternate forms of energy, but it will have to happen sometime in the future anyway. Countries like Denmark and Germany are pushing into renewable energy in a (relatively) big way, and they are already reaping the benefits. Vestas (for example) is cornering the wind technology market (which grows at about 25% annually). In the future this leadership and their technology will pay off big time.

Maybe you should try some greasel?

One (what this story started as) is a diesel conversion kit that you install on your car - you still have a diesel tank that you must fill (much less often), and you add another tank with fry grease. You start the car/truck on reg. diesel (or biodiesel if you're so inclined). Once the engine is warm, you flip a valve, and you will be them pumping SVO as they call it - Straight Vegetable Oil - to your injectors. The SVO must be warmed to flow properly through your fuel system and into the injectors. Running vegetable oil into a diesel engine was designed before running petro-oil into a diesel engine. Not a very new concept, although the people doing this have been on the fringe.

The other, Thermal Depolymerization, is a relatively new process (more precisely, an old process that has recently been improved to make it closer to cost-effective) that takes anything with hydrocarbons, and breaks the molecules down into components, including water, whatever non-hydrocarbon stuff was in the input, and an oil that can be re-distilled into whatever product you want (gasoline, diesel, etc).

There is a third process not directly mentioned here, but the process of making biodiesel. This is accomplished with a vat of fry oil, some lye, some methanol, a mixing apparatus, and time. You mix the stuff up, and get some glycerin, and regular diesel that you can put in your fuel tank for your car, truck, farm tractor, diesel generator, etc. The article I linked says the guy gets about 85% diesel and 15% glycerin from his fry oil, and if he gets the oil for free, the other ingredients work out to 54 cents a gallon, plus his time.

Of course, the majority of us with our gasoline engines, are still stuck with petroleum coming out of the ground, or maybe in the future from the Thermal Depolymerization process.

From the FAQ:

Did Greasel discover that diesel engines will run on cooking oil?
No. The first diesel engines (invented by Rudolf Diesel in the late 1800's) were actually designed to run on plant oils. Immediately after Rudolf's untimely demise, his colleagues (who were just then tapping the resources of petro-based fuel sources) swept his veggie ideas under the rug and actually converted his design to run on petro-based 'diesel' fuel (which they were nice enough to name after him).

(Emphasis mine)

I'm not all that excited about biodiesel because of the methanol needed to produce it. But I'm interested in a system that burns straight vegetable oil.