Has anyone done this? How hard is it? Can you collect and filter the grease yourself efficiently at home, or does it pay to buy pre-filtered grease from a local company? There’s one around here that sells it filtered for $2/gallon. Considering gas is now close to $4 around here, this would still be a net gain for us.
My husband has this idea that he wants to get a HUMMER H1 V8 diesel turbo and convert it himself. Is this possible? Is it as good an idea as it seems, or is there some hidden difficulty in converting them that we should know about?
We are going to consult with the biodiesel company locally, but I was wondering if anyone here had any experience with it, or could direct me to some good websites about it.
You need to have dual tanks to make this work. One tank gets a heater loop, and then heated fuel lines all the way to the engine, heated fuel filter, etc.
The website quoted a flat price for the grease. If there’s a tax, it’s included. Though obviously it would be cheaper to get your own grease, if filtering it is something that’s practical to do at home. Anyone know?
It’s filtered right on the bus itself. Basically it’s a series of filters. The first filter is on the end of the hose that you stick in the restaurant’s grease traps. It’s a metal filter, basically a can with about 8 gauge holes in it to keep out the big particles. Then it gets sucked in through the hose into the tank. There is a filter between the hose and the tank also to get the smaller particles. It resides in the tank.
You definitely need two tanks. You prime the engine with regular diesel, and you have to heat up the grease to get it to the right viscosity where it will combust. Now, the way he heated it up was by running a line from the radiator into the veggie oil tank. So after you’ve been running on regular diesel for a while, you flip the switch and change tanks.
He likened driving the bus more to sailing than driving, as you were kind of at the mercy of finding oil. Not all oil is usable. He eschewed McDonald’s oil because it was too dirty. Getting oil is becoming more difficult because more people are doing this, and also because biodiesel companies are going around acquiring veggie oil on a corporate level and getting contracts from restaurants for their oil. You are not necessarily going to be able to find oil when you need it, so you may find yourself filling up on regular diesel more often.
Back to filters. After the tank holding the oil, there is yet another filter that filters it before it goes into the engine. And then of course there are the filters in the engine itself. The filters are going to be your biggest running expense, other than the time devoted to going through with this. It’s a labor of love, you don’t really get much of a cost savings out of it. You’ll be replacing oil filters every week at least.
That’s basically the long and short of it. You can get hooked up with someone who can do the conversion for you pretty easily I would think. Good luck, though I think that getting a Hummer for this purpose might be a bit of overkill.
Yeah, grease, because biodiesel costs as much as gasoline. The idea really is to save money, so if it’s not going to do that, then it’s not worth doing. The cost of biodiesel, according to the local place, is $4, so no savings there. I have no idea what the refining process is like or if we could do it at home, or if it’s worth doing of the car can just run on grease.
As for the HUMMER-- we found some online for under $20,000. We’re not talking one of the $100,000 jobs.
There’s a guy in a town not far from me who converted his car and hen made a deal with a local greasy spoon diner to get the grease. Normally, they have to pay some servce to come and take away their deep fryer grease, so they were thrilled that he’d take away loads of it at no charge.
I’ll try to look up his site. I’ve no idea what he did to filter the grease before putting it in his converted engine.
(Fianceephone and I really wanted to convert our car, but it’s not a deisel engine )
Bwaaaaaaaahhhhhhaaaaaaaaah.
It is obvious neither of you live in California
In California there is no such thing as a free lunch. We have insanely low property taxes, but the state goes after everything else. Oh and beowulff there is a line on our income tax form for internet purchases, so you can pay the sales tax.
There is a fuel cooperative in town, so apparently it’s not being held up by red tape ala your state. I didn’t know there were all those taxes. I wonder if they have them in NY too?
I’ve never done it myself, but I used to know someone who did.
Waste vegetable oil has a couple of issues. You have to heat it or else it will congeal into a solid mass in your fuel tank and fuel lines. The kits aren’t too difficult to install yourself, assuming you are reasonably handy. You also have to be careful how you operate it. The basic idea is that you start off of regular diesel. When the WVO is heated up to temperature, you switch over to it. Then, before you shut the engine off, you switch back to regular diesel so you don’t have problems with the stuff freezing in your fuel line. One problem you can run into is if you switch over to the WVO too early. If the oil isn’t hot enough, it tends to clump as it comes out of the injectors, and these clumps don’t burn all the way through. This causes gunk to build up inside your engine. Some people say that operating WVO is bad for your engine because of this, but really, as long as you use it properly, it’s not a problem.
Also, check with other folks who have done this to see if there are any issues with your specific engine. Some cars will run just fine with no major modifications to them. Others don’t do so well. I have no idea about the Hummer.
The guy I know who did it used straight waste oil from restaurants (the stuff that still has the french fries floating in it). He had a fairly sophisticated multi-stage filter system somewhat similar to what mswas described, except that it was larger and was in his garage. He got the oil for free, dumped it into the big tank on top of his filter system, and a day or two later (it took a while) he had usable oil out the bottom. Unlike what mswas posted, I don’t recall him complaining about having to change his fuel filter often. I think his extra heavy duty filter system in his garage made that unnecessary. It could also be that he had the issue but just never complained about it.
This is all second hand information, so don’t take any of it as gospel. I’m just trying to point you in the right direction.
I don’t know, but you might want to check before you get gob smacked.
Just to give you a comparison, I have a good friend that lives in Orange County New York. His property taxes are $33,000/ year. :eek: here in California property taxes are based on what you paid for the house. Based on his purchase price out here he would be paying about $2,200/ year.
FWIW my property taxes are about $750/ year. (I’ve been in this house a loooong time)
Does this explain why the tax man in California looks long and hard for every nickel?
It’s not just filtering though is it, don’t you need to add significant quantities of methanol (about 200ml per litre) and potassium hydroxide to the used cooking oil and let it sit for a while before its actually fuel?
I’ve done this: Experimental Truck on a Shoestring Budget . My main problem was that my vehicle had a rotary type fuel injection pump and was not strong enough to pull the oil. I usually thinned the oil out with gasoline (4:1 oil to gas ratio). I’ve been told that with a piston type fuel injection system enough head is developed that this is not a problem.
I used vegetable oil that had been used to fry chicken. I filtered it through a 20 micron filter and let it sit for a week before using, gravity being the best filter. Engineer_comp_geek the best usable oil is near the top of the drum, the moisture and crap goes to the bottom.
I drove my truck on vegetable oil for almost ten thousand miles then I lost the rear main bearing and I have parked it. I do not believe that fuel was a problem, though, it was probably the half a million miles on the odometer (I bought my truck for $800). I am in the market for my next diesel vehicle to convert.
The lye and methanol are added to make biodiesel that can be used in a vehicle that has not been adapted to use pure vegetable oil. Making biodiesel has it’s own problems, most notably that it will self-ignite while you make it. Tank heaters and inline heaters are used to make the oil hot enough to ignite on compression.
I do not believe that Rudolf Diesel ever ran an engine on petroleum fuels. He usually used canola or peanut oil.
Are there any problems with the salt in used cooking grease?
I could see where the fuel lines would be okay since they’re usually stainless steel. But what about the fuel tank and the internals of the injector pump? Would the salt cause corrosion problems in the lng run?
I’ll do you one worse - Here in VT, we have a line on our income taxes that adds the sales tax based on a percent of income, reguardless of whether or not you bought anything on the internet.
Back on topic: Can you do a straight cost comparison between oil and gas, without considering efficiency? In other words, does a $2 galon of oil get you as far as a $4 galon of gas?
Some students here converted a bus and went on a tour. One of them told me that strictly speaking, using biodiesel is illegal, as the fuel is not taxed. Is this true?
Salt (in quantities that would matter) is usually added to food after frying. It sticks to the grease on the hot food very well. If added to the outside prior to cooking, it’d dissolve as the water bubbles out of the food as steam.
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