Drive a Greasecar - DIY Biodiesel

TinyTim writes "Sure, you could buy expensive biodiesel for you car - or you can hack your diesel to run on filtered vegetable oil. Kits take a few hours to install and cost about $800, but you can get your fuel free from restaurant deep-fryers (the filters are ~$10/2000mi). Supposedly no loss of performance or mileage, and you can change between diesel and veggie oil with the flick of a switch. A previous article mentioned the theoretical possibility, but it looks like kits are now available from greasecar.com."

Comments

How far can this go?

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly how much used vegetable oil do we have lying around to convert into biodiesel? If there's so much waste veggie oil, there must be some other industry that takes it and uses it for another manufacturing process. It's a great idea, but I don't see this displacing the oil industry anytime soon.

Re:How far can this go?

[PD]

The farm equipment is usually diesel, and that can run on biodiesel too.

Anyway, these carbons in the fuel are the good carbons. They are the ones that were floating around the atmosphere just last year. The bad carbons are the ones that were floating around 50 million years ago.

We can burn all the fuel we want if we burn the kind that is made from carbons that were floating around last year.

What's the point?

[anthony_dipierro]

There are still harmful emissions, and there's not enough fuel available to take a significant chunk out of the current fuel usage. Sorry, this isn't a solution. The only current solution is to reduce the amount of fuel you use, by taking a bus or other mass transit, for instance.

Re:What's the point?

[swordgeek]

You're right, and...

You're wrong.

This is slowly driving me crazy. This is an alternative idea, and one that is WORKING on a small scale. There are people right now who are recycling fryer grease into car fuel.

- Is it emission free? Of course not!
- Are the emissions better than gas/diesel emissions? Maybe. Maybe not.
- Is this going to make it all OK for all of us to drive big cars as much as possible? Of course not!!!
- Is it at least going to replace fossil fuels? Don't be absurd!

This is not a solution. Electric cars or hybrids are not a solution. H2, solar, or compressed air powered cars are not the solution! No piece of technology stuck onto a car is going to solve the socioeconomic nightmare of our dependency on vehicles!

BUT...

That doesn't mean we shouldn't use this. In fact, we should be VIGOROUSLY studying these alternatives. The bottom line is that if we wait for a solution, it'll never happen and we'll eventually be buried up to our asses in rusted carparts and used car oil. WHILE we pursue a solution, we MUST be using this thing, the electric cars available, Hybrids, diesel, and whatever else is out there. Same for engines--let's look at the Wankel again, now that Mazda has (sadly) dropped it. If they get used, they get researched. If they don't get used, we'll end up stuck with inefficient, archaic, dinosaur-burning tanks until the end of time; and that will come a lot quicker as a result.

So quit throwing away all of the little steps forward--they're the only way we advance.

What is the total emissions picture?

[Ticonderoga]

One thing I wonder -- what is the total emissions picture for operating this vehicle based on fryer food? One problem with the most common renewable energy source for gasoline engines -- ethanol -- is that you use almost as much energy in the conversion process that you gain from making the ethanol. How is vegetable oil made? Once use surpasses the amount reclaimed from food service, would it make economic sense to make vegetable oil just for vehicular use?