Driving on french fry oil?

Bill Roberts posted a comment on a blog of another subject and mentioned bio-diesel.  He thought I might have an opinion... and that I might have done a little research...

How did he ever guess?

Honestly, if I had the room I would be brewing it up in the garage right now (see, this is another reason for a big garage... I could save money and resources).

Now, if you aren't following yet, let me do a little catching up for you.

When Rudolf Diesel invented the Diesel engine, he designed it to run on peanut oil and other vegetable based "fuels."  Because it was easier to use lightly refined crude oil (we call it petro-Diesel) that type of fuel became dominant.  

Fast forward to now...  Bio-Diesel is a very viable boutique fuel.  There are some limitations, and that is why I call it a boutique fuel.  The primary limitation is that there simply isn't enough land to grow enough crops to replace petro-Diesel with veggie-Diesel.  So, if there is a conflict between food and fuel, I vote food. 

So, Lane, get to the french fries...

Enter WVO, or Waste Vegetable Oil.  A few enterprising individuals have figured out that modern Diesels will run on a few variants of left-over vegetable oil like a restaurant might throw away.  I'm going to spend a longer moment on trans-estered bio-Diesel, but before that, I will mention that one can actually just filter to remove the chunks and drive many older Diesel engine on the straight, used or new, veggie oil.  The rubber seals might need to be upgraded from older rubber seals and the vehicle needs to be run on petro-Diesel at start-up and shut-down, but it will run without a mileage or maintenance penalty on veggie oil.  The only other modification is having a second fuel tank so that the fuels can be separated. 

What I think is exciting is bio-Diesel.  Through a simply chemical process, the oil that is used by fast food or Mexican or other restaurants can be converted to fuel.  After conversion, it can be run in most late-model Diesel powered vehicles with NO modifications.  It burns cleaner, gets equal or better mileage... and the exhaust smells like french fries.  Here are a couple of links with more info.  

National BioDiesel Board 

BioDiesel Now 

Freedom Fuel America

In order to brew bio-Diesel, there are a few steps.  After collection and filtering, there are a few measurements, and then adding a few metered chemicals.  I'm not going to go through the steps, because it is covered in depth on a lot of websites, but I will say that it sounds a lot tougher than it is.  Save money?  I'm told by people that I know brewing it that their cost is about $1/gallon plus the cost of used vegetable oil and the one time cost of equipment.  A couple of the guys are actually getting paid to take the used oil from a local fast food place.  Equipment can run from $300-$400 for those that have a lot of contacts and know how to dig up to about $2000 for a full kit with everything needed to get started.  

Keep in mind, not only is this a cleaner burning fuel, but it is a problem in most places for the restaurants to dispose of... and it makes a great fuel.