Burning waste cooking oil

[Rob Beckers]

Seems biodiesel is already 'out', and the new kid on the block is straight cooking oil (in other words, no need to turn it into biodiesel, just use it as-is). A company named Greasecar (http://www.greasecar.com/) sells conversion kits to make any diesel engine run on waste cooking oil.

Makes your car smell like fried food according to the company. :D

Does anyone have experience with this? It would seem that being able to use waste vegetable oil without going through the rather nasty process of turning it into biodiesel is quite a benefit!

-Rob-

[Kareem Shihab]

I like the site but i am still left with a few questions about the system, and waste veggie oil. It mentions that you have to used oil free of water and contamantion, and essentially filter it yourself. How easy or difficult is that? Can you mix a bunch of oils together and used them as a mixture? It dosen't tell me how long it takes to heat up the veggie oil to where it is usable or in other words How much diesel you have to use before you can make switch over. -k

[Chuck Patenaude]

is used veg oil for home and restaraunt heating, I currently have three systems under design/or install, and expect a lot more inquiries going forward...in our climate, grease cars can be a bit scary for most people.

[Rob Beckers]

It dosen't tell me how long it takes to heat up the veggie oil to where it is usable or in other words How much diesel you have to use before you can make switch over. -k

Television recently showed a car diesel engine that was running on cooking oil. They had a few turns of (metal) fuel tubing around one of the exhaust pipes of the exhaust manifold. They started the engine using an electrical pre-heater for the initial fuel going in (this engine used only cooking oil, no regular diesel at all), but this only lasted seconds, then it would produce enough heat to keep itself going. Looked like they had a bit of trouble starting, then again this was experimental, once it was running it seemed to run very well.

-Rob-

[Jon Durham]

Hmmm....I already see some interesting questions to my questions that I already asked in the other forum....

I have seen a couple set ups for the WVO conversions. The WVO does need to be filtered to 5 microns. One guy was just using a settling tank and then coffee filters. Both set ups started up on diesel, preheated the WVO with a heat exchange from the cooling system and then a final stage of heating to 160 + using a heated fuel filter set up. There is a company marketing the fuel filter kit. Once the WVO is up to temperature, the diesel valve is closed and the WVO vavle opened. Also, on some engines, there is a return line from the injectors to the fuel tank. If you have that, you also have to install a valve to divert the WVO back to the WVO tank so it doesn't mix with the diesel. That makes for starting problems. I have a '71 Mecedes I want to convert. The older Mercedes engines are very tolerant and supposed to be easy to convert with out problems. The owners manuals from the 60's even list vegtable oil as an emergency fuel. I'll keep you all posted on how it goes. My biggest question is using an exhaust heat exchange set up instead of the heated fuel filter which is pretty expensive. I think with a little trial and error, I can find the right amount of wraps around the exhaust to get my temp right.

[John Dalhaus]

As I've posted on another thread, I choose corn to heat my home. No refining is necessary. And, since I live in the corn belt, corn is cheap.

For more info on corn burning, try this: http://www.iburncorn.com

Bottom Line: I'm saving money on my heating bills.

[Robert Harder]

Television recently showed a car diesel engine that was running on cooking oil. They had a few turns of (metal) fuel tubing around one of the exhaust pipes of the exhaust manifold. They started the engine using an electrical pre-heater for the initial fuel going in (this engine used only cooking oil, no regular diesel at all), but this only lasted seconds, then it would produce enough heat to keep itself going. Looked like they had a bit of trouble starting, then again this was experimental, once it was running it seemed to run very well.

-Rob-

20* below zero is an every winter occurrence for me and I firmly believe that you'd destroy the injection pump long before it got that cold trying to start it right off the vegetable oil. However with a small tank (1/2 gallon) of veg oil, located in the engine compartment, that is refilled continually from the large tank, the needed warmup time before the switchover could be reduced considerably