RV Processes Own Fuel on Cross-Country Trip

An anonymous reader writes "Frybrid has realized the dream of Dr. Emmet Brown's Delorean: putting garbage directly into your vehicle, and have it be turned into directly into fuel. This past fall, Frybrid installed a system into a 40' luxury RV that sucked up waste vegetable oil from the back of restaurants, removed the water and filtered it, and then burned the dry and cleaned vegetable oil as fuel. The family drove their converted RV from Seattle to Rhode Island on $47 worth of diesel fuel. Plans are underway for a smaller version of the system to fit in the bed of a pickup truck."

Comments

This is nothing new...

[norite]

Diesel engines were designed to run on vegetable oil in the first place; Rudolph Diesel demonstrated his engine at the World's Fair in Paris back in 1900; His engine was running on peanut oil.
In fact my own car has been adapted to run on vegetable oil, (either used or fresh) I collect used oil and filter it in my back yard, down to 5 microns. My car runs just great on it, absolutely no difference in performance, and I'm sill getting the same mileage, around 45mpg (US) or 55mpg(UK). My car's exhaust smells a LOT nicer (sort of a popcorn, or hot oil 'flavor'), and vegetable oil is a cleaner burning fuel, so emissions are lower. And of course, it's carbon neutral :o) I guess there are enough takeaways, restaurants and other food places in my town to power at least 100 diesel cars; in fact I have more oil than I can process right now, so I'm looking to expand my filtering operations.
A friend of mine is doing the same, at his place of work, they have a canteen, and they're getting through more oil than he needs. the places that we're getting it from, are more than happy for us to take it away, because they have to pay to have it taken away, and we'll do it for free...

now that I've gone veggie, I won't be going back. The heat exchanger kit that is installed in my car can easily be taken out and fitted into my next car. It's a win win situation:

We're using a waste product that was grown locally

It's cheaper (as in free!)

We're not funding Big Oil, who are themselves supporting dodgy, corrupt, undemocratic and/or unstable regimes.

There are some strong economic, political and ethical reasons to run on vegetable oil. For me, it's a no-brainer :o)