Running Cars on Vegetable oil

Euric · Intermediate Crude Joined: Dec 04, 2004 Posts: 635

Has anyone ever heard of running a car on vegetable oil? Recently a friend told me of someone he knows who has done this. To do this, the person had to buy a kit for his engine and have it installed. Also he has to have a second tank installed in the trucnk as the first tank is used to store Diesel fuel, which the car will also run on with the modification.

This person is able to then go to local restaurants and obtain for free used vegetable oil. He cleans it by straining and pours it into the tank in the trunk. Supposedly, the car operates no differently.

When asked about fuel consumption, the person never said, but commented that "who cares if I get the Vegetable oil for free"?

I did a Google search and came up with some sites reporting on it. From what I gather it must only be a modification to an existing Diesel engine and won't work on gasoline engines.

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=RNWE,RNWE:2004-23,RNWE:en&q=%22Vegetable+oil%22+car

Is this our answer to oil shortages in the future?

Barbara · Posted: Sun Mar 20, 2005 8:42 am Post subject:

Last week it was on every TV news here in Italy: a lot of people just throw seeds oil into their tanks without modifications and it works great. But you can do it with older diesel engines only.
Here diesel gas is $5,3 per gallon while seeds oil is about $3.
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RonMN · Posted: Sun Mar 20, 2005 8:48 am Post subject: energy equivelant

Fuel made from veggie oil is called "biodiesel" and yes it works but you need to factor in the energy equivelant. Currently light sweet crude oil pumping is roughly 1:100 meaning for the energy of 1 barrel of oil we put in to pumping we get 100 barrels out. With biodiesel it more like 1:1 we put in 1 unit of energy and get out about 1 unit of energy...

So you see, it's really no sollution Sad

Kingcoal · Posted: Sun Mar 20, 2005 8:58 am Post subject:

A diesel engine can run on vegetable oil with no problems. The very first diesel engine was powered by peanut oil. However, vegetable oil is very viscous and needs to be kept at a temperature where it can flow properly through fuel lines, injectors, etc. To solve this problem, Biodiesel was created. In a process called transesterification, glycerin is chemically removed from the vegetable oil which significantly reduces it's viscosity.

Right now, vegetable oil is free. However, as conventional diesel fuel becomes very expensive, look for used vegetable oil to loose its free status. Also, I don't think enough French fries are consumed worldwide to produce enough waste vegetable oil to power even a small number of cars on the road.

RonMN · Posted: Sun Mar 20, 2005 9:58 am Post subject: P.S.

I find the pic of Peak Oil Jane Rumsfeld to be more disturbing than peak oil itself!!! Shocked

cube · Fusion Joined: Mar 12, 2005 Posts: 3776

Seriously how well does a car perform using "biodiesel"? I'm assuming biodiesel has a lower energy density then regular disel so the performance will be much less???

RonMN · Posted: Sun Mar 20, 2005 2:21 pm Post subject: Biodiesel

check out GREENSTARUSA.COM...they're manufacturing biodiesel & say the energy density is very close if not equal to petroleum diesel. I read something about 99 mpg once at their site but can't remember what that was about (it was a while ago).
Bye-the-way...i didn't mean to sound so negative about the energy ratio about biodiesel. It's got alot of GREAT qualities! We should be using ALL the waste oil from all the fast food places & mixing a percentage in with regular diesel to streach the supply...but for an all out sollution to peak oil...this ain't it.

NeoPeasant · Posted: Sun Mar 20, 2005 4:57 pm Post subject:

Even in the current time of abundant fried fast food shacks there is probably only enough waste vegetable oil to support a couple dozen hippies per community. In difficult financial times fast food will go out of fashion, drying up the supply. In times of famine, vegetable oil will be directly consumed rather than used as a disposable cooking media.
There is still much argument about whether it is cost effective to grow oil crops for use as vehicle fuel- there may be little or no energy gain and we may not be able to spare the agricultural capacity in the future in any case.

Rather than look for substitute fuels for future transportation, we need to start designing out the need for so much moving around just as we started designing it in about a century ago. Civilized communities functioned without cars for 9.9 of the last 10 millenia and they will do so again.

Euric · Intermediate Crude Joined: Dec 04, 2004 Posts: 635

0mar · Posted: Tue Mar 22, 2005 11:35 am Post subject: Re: energy equivelant

pip · Posted: Wed Mar 23, 2005 8:21 am Post subject:

Running straight vege oil not converted to biodiesel will eventually clog injectors and mess with valves from what I've read.
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Ludi · Posted: Wed Mar 23, 2005 8:37 am Post subject:

In some communities it's extremely difficult to find enough used veg oil, because it's already sold for other purposes. So local biodiesel manufacturers aren't able to produce the fuel.

EZODIAK · Tar Sands Joined: Nov 26, 2004 Posts: 25

Terms are getting meshed together here making it sound like biodiesel is the same as the vat of grease behind a chinese restaurant which its not.

Theres Biodiesel which is not the same thing as raw vegetable oil but derived from natural oils and is produced by a chemical process which then removes the glycerin from the oil. And its something thats for sale at specific locations.

then there's:
SVU-- straight vegetable oil
WVU-- waste vegetable oil

WVU is what the original poster is referring to, free waste oil from fast food restaurants and then filtered out.

WVU/SVU requires a modification be made to their diesel car/truck, usually from a kit purchased which one can do themselves.

Biodiesel on the otherhand requires no conversion or else a very minor one to be made on your diesel car/truck (Heinberg for instance runs an old mercedez diesels on bio and had mentioned to me something minor he had to do to it)

All in all no it won't save the whole motoring world but is a great solution individually for getting off the gas grid, saving $, etc..

pup55 · Expert Joined: May 26, 2004 Posts: 3801

"Bytesmiths" posted on this site for awhile and I think he was actually doing this on a small scale.

Maybe if somebody PM's him he will comment.

Ludi · Posted: Wed Mar 23, 2005 6:09 pm Post subject:

My sister made biodiesel and had trouble finding sufficient oil to make it worthwhile. The product she made worked, but may have caused $1700 damage to her truck. Something to think about before you start pouring strange oil into your vehicle - fuel injectors can get clogged quite easily...