December 2007/January 2008

Would You Use Veggie Oil to Fuel Your Vehicle?

By Tim Wacker

Vegetable oil can power your vehicle, but the effects on the environment are still unclear.

This may sound strange, but you can run your diesel car or truck on vegetable oil and nearly eliminate your use of traditional gas or diesel. For certain people, veggie oil could lead to major savings. Called veggie cars or grease cars, these vehicles have fuel systems modified to burn both diesel fuel and straight vegetable oil. The idea is actually a modern twist on the original intention for the diesel engine.

But even proponents say veggie oil is not for everyone because of the extra work it requires. Nevertheless, there is a small, but growing, part of the population that’s passionate about using grease to make their cars go. These people are drawn to this alternative fuel because it saves them money, gives them more control of their transportation fuel needs and makes a difference for the environment.

All this may sound too good to be true, and in some ways it is. Is it the most environmentally friendly alternative fuel? Should new vegetable oil or used grease be used? And here’s the real kicker: It’s technically illegal (see “Veggie Oil Vehicles and the Law,” below). So, before you start hoarding Wesson Oil, there are a few things you should consider.

Want Fries with That?

To get a sense of how this works, consider the example of Ty Martin. On Thursdays and Sundays the Lawrence, Kan., auto mechanic parks behind his favorite restaurant and heads inside for a hamburger and fries. As he eats with friends at the bar, kitchen staff fill a tank in the back of his truck with grease that was used to cook food just the day before. An hour later, truck and driver head home, both smelling faintly of burnt peanut oil. The used grease then propels Martin’s pickup all over town, all for free (except the food).

For Martin, burning vegetable oil means more than maintaining a dual fuel system. It’s a lifestyle, attracting the bohemian in a growing number of Americans who, for environmental, financial and/or political reasons, bristle over using fossil fuels for transportation. Whatever your motivation might be, if you have a diesel engine, it could run on cooking oil.

In fact, in the 1890s German inventor Rudolf Diesel originally designed his engine to run on vegetable oil.

A New Kind of Kit Car

The big challenge with using vegetable oil in Diesel’s engine was, and is, cold weather. Vegetable oil works best when it is hot — ideally 160 degrees — and it thickens like butter when it is cold. That means the engine has to be warmed up before it can run on vegetable oil, and the veggie oil must be flushed out before the engine cools down. Otherwise, you will have clogged fuel lines when you next try to start the car. To convert a diesel engine to run on veggie oil, you have several options.

The conversion hardware can be bought in kit form from a variety of manufacturers. Greasecar Vegetable Fuel Systems of Easthampton, Mass., estimates they’ve sold about 4,000 of their conversion kits over the past few years at prices ranging from $995 to $2,000. Lovecraft Bio-Fuels of Los Angeles, Calif., and Portland, Ore., which sells kits and installs them, estimates it has sold about 1,800 units, starting at $425 for the kit alone and $870 installed. (Lovecraft also sells a one-tank system.)

Some people custom build veggie cars. Martin saw his friend Marcos Markoulatos’ Greasecar kit in operation and decided he could do the conversion himself. He ended up with a used gas tank behind his truck seat and rubber heating hoses running from his truck radiator through the tank — all for $250.

Veggie-capable Vehicles

Finding just the right car to burn vegetable oil can be more challenging. First and foremost, it has to have a diesel engine. The best cars to convert tend to be older models, according to Lovecraft. The exception appears to be the Volkswagen Jetta TDI — even more recent editions can be converted easily. Among the better older models for veggie conversions is the Mercedes 300 SD, particularly model years 1981 to 1985. Greasecar, on the other hand, says the majority of its kits go in newer domestic trucks or Volkswagen cars.

Diesel trucks get plenty of power out of vegetable oil. Martin said his 1990 Dodge Ram pickup made the switch without slowing down. Lovecraft and Greasecar both said the Ford F250 diesel models from 1995 to 2000 are well-suited for conversions. These trucks easily accommodate the necessary plumbing changes for burning vegetable oil.

New or Used Cooking Oil?

Vegetable oil enthusiasts love the idea of free fuel, so they take used cooking oil restaurants would otherwise throw away. To find a veggie-car-friendly eatery near you, click here.

For converts less concerned about saving money, or perhaps skeptical about using waste oil, brand-new vegetable oil is another option. But you’ll pay a premium.  At your local supermarket it can cost $6 a gallon or more. The cheapest oil right now is soybean oil, which can be bought in 250 gallon containers for about $3.40 a gallon. A company called Smarter Fuel, based in Bethlehem, Pa., refines used vegetable oil from restaurants across the mid-Atlantic states and resells it for $1.95 per gallon.

The cost of the new and refined oils does translate into fewer headaches than burning free used vegetable oil, which can have bread crumbs, water, even the occasional chunk of catfish in it. But there are different schools of thought on how clean used vegetable oil needs to be before you burn it in an engine.

One restaurant prefilters the oil for Martin and Markoulatos to clean it up a bit, and then the two tinkerers pour the oil into a 55-gallon plastic drum with a spigot 6 inches from the bottom. They let the oil sit for a week before drawing off everything above the dregs. Before they pour that into their trucks, they filter it again.

Pollution-wise, the differences between burning new and used vegetable oil are less stark. William Kemp, in his book Biodiesel Basics and Beyond says that new and used oil just about tie on soot and nitrogen oxide emissions, while waste oil puts out more carbon monoxide, and new oil puts out more carbon dioxide.

When comparing vegetable oil emissions to petrodiesel, the results are more mixed. Diesel exhaust puts out more soot than veggie oil, while putting out about 10 percent fewer hydrocarbons. But these measurements, Kemp says, don’t account for the biggest environmental argument in favor of vegetable oil to fuel cars: global warming. You have to grow plants to produce vegetable oil so the carbon dioxide emitted by burning it is captured as a new crop of oil plants grows.

Then there is veggie oil’s close cousin (some would say rival) biodiesel which is vegetable oil chemically processed to work like petrodiesel in standard diesel engines without modifications. It is available, usually blended with petrodiesel, at hundreds of filling stations across the country. Biodiesel proponents say veggie oil fuel, particularly waste oil, will always be a low-volume, backyard enterprise.

“People think vegetable oil and biodiesel are the same; they are not,” says Joshua Tickell, author of Biodiesel America. “Modern diesels are not made to run on straight vegetable oil (SVO). The SVO concept distracts from the huge potential of the biodiesel industry. There is no prospect for straight vegetable oil being a reliable fuel,” Tickell says.

There are numerous fans of veggie oil fuel, though, who have come to the opposite conclusion and feel just as strongly.

“Our conversion kits are developed and tested by our engineers for each specific application to ensure compatibility, and we have many customers who have been running successfully for almost 10 years,” says Justin Carven, founder of Greasecar.

(These contrasting perspectives are but one example of the contentious and evolving debate about the short- and long-term feasibility of biofuels. For more on their potential compared to other energy options, see Solar is the Solution. Mother )

With all this in mind, the decision to use vegetable oil for fuel is one to consider carefully. Concerns about taxes and EPA regulations are significant. And for many people, filtering the veggie oil and the potential for mechanical problems would be inconvenient. But for those who can embrace these challenges, veggie oil is a fun and empowering solution.

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