Running Vehicles on Vegetable Oil?

the green giant asks: "There has been a lot of info on alternative energy powered vehicles lately, and this is good. However, most of us still drive the old-fashioned petroleum burning kind of cars. How hard will it be for us (the hackers) to take the lead in switching to innovative, replenishable energy sources? Well now it looks like there is a diesel/veggyoil HOWTO at The VeggyVan Website in the form of a book: From the Fryer to the Fuel Tank. I am ordering it now, so I haven't gotten the chance to read more than is on the website. Apparently you cannot merely pour vegetable oil in every diesel engine without problems, but you can (and there are instructions in the book) make your own biodiesel at home, and they claim to have gotten the price down to $.50 / gallon. Also, the book is supposed to contain instructions on how to modify any diesel engine to run off straight vegetable oil. I wonder how difficult this is to do. Has anyone read this book and care to comment on it?" Wow! I'm stoked that people are actually getting alternative fuel and energy sources into practical and everyday devices.

Fossil fuels will not last forever, we all know this, so it's great to see a breakthru like this one. While this probably won't yet take the world by storm, what do you think the automotive industry will look like in 10 years if technologies like this become commonplace in another 2-5 years?

Comments

Re:Proper engineering is about appropriate use.

[unitron]

"1. How much petroleum (fertiliser and fuel) and land use does it take to make a gallon of used french-fry oil?"

No more than it takes if you pour it out of the fryer into the garbage can or drain or whatever. This way you take something that already exists and, instead of just throwing it away, get more use out of it and keep it from clogging up municipal sewage systems as well, which is a real problem anywhere you have a restaurant or three.

Not to mention that the exhaust smells like french fries :-) (Really)

I think air is cheaper...

[RhetoricalQuestion]

I'm still waiting for the compressed-air car to come North America.

IMO, the air-powered car is one of the best ideas in a long time.