Vegetable oil replaces gasoline!
 

So I was just watching an AOL CNN news update (again) and watched a ~25 year old kid put vegetable oil into a modified engine and run a VW Jetta off of it! The announcer then cooked some bacon, took the grease, poured it into the heated gastank, and drove off. The engine is $750 and gets 50 miles per gallon.

I'm yet to hear of any downsides, but man I love the people out there that are trying for such helpful inventions.

-T

Biodiesel has been around for a long time. I don't know if it's true, but at first diesel engines were designed for farmers and were supposed to run off of corn oil. The guy who made it disappeared and instead they use heavier distillates from oil instead.

Although you could do this, look at how much a gallon of vegetable oil costs. You might get more mileage, but you'll still spend more.

Lots of restaurants pay for services to remove their used up oil. I read the other day that people who use these engines just make agreements with restaurants to take it for free.

A friend of mine converted his van to run on vegtable oil, it runs great. They just stop in at resturants and pick up their used oil, most places are happy to just give it away. I never thought I would get sick of the smell of french fries though :). It does get a bit overpowering after a while.

Anyone want to start a pool to see how long it takes Big Oil to make this 25 year old kid disappear?:hmm:

Fuck that. I'd patent it, sell the plans to big oil and retire.

They had a writeup on this in Car and Driver awhile back. The main problem is that vegetable oil / canola oil, etc is too thick at "room temperature." It tends to clog up the fuel system. You have to heat it up first so its viscosity goes down. What most people do is run the engine on diesel fuel for a few minutes at startup to get things hot, then switch over to biodiesel with a switch near the driver's seat. About a minute before they shut down, they switch over to regular diesel again to clean out the oil from the fuel system. Interesting technology, but kind of a PITA if you ask me.

Yes - that's all fine, well, and good.

Realistically however, you're talking about replacing the fuel needs of a fleet of many millions of vehicles. We're a very long way from anything of this sort.

in less than a decade cellphone penetration is getting there and is rivaling those that have land lines. it didn't take that long, just enough $$$ in the dreamy eyes of the companies to see the profits to build out the infrastructure.

just a matter of retraining the sheep to go a different way.. baaah.

http://www.greasel.com for those interested ;)

Cynthetiq, of course your realize the vast differences between a new form of communication and the vast requirements of fueling our fleet. This sort of solution has certainly been attempted many times and has yet to create a sensation.

I can't imagine you believe this isn't a long way off - but perhaps you do. I have no reason to not have the same hope as you may be describing.

As per usual though, my comments are made in the interest of what is realistically doable and not what could, should, or may be.

Government subsidies can make many things that don't seem doable from a profit standpoint a viable option. Unfortunately, priorities seem to make the use of subsidies to deal with problems proactively rather than reactively not likely at this point in time.

no i'm not seeing much different than you. it's all a matter of profitability and they don't see it as profitable otherwise it would have been started already.

having seen the increase from the 70's mileages of 7mpg to 30+ seemed impossible, but since the infrastructure was already in place the incentive was the continue to develop the combustible engine into something more efficient was much more palatable than overhauling the whole thing.

Looking at the conversion of television to HDTV is probably the only mandate. It is painful for both the consumer and media provider. We'll see with this same kind of impact where the infrastructure needs to be changed vastly in order to facilitate the vehicles that ride on it.

OK, Cynthetic, absolutely - as far as I can go with this is:
I'm all for it!

Do I really think it will happen in the next decade?

Nope.

There are definitely more promising methods for creating better-emission transportation. I just enjoy seeing any kinds of shot towards progression.

I don't think anything will happen until it's absolutely necessary. Until scientists come foreward and have the president address the nation saying "We all must buy hydrogen cars (for ex.) and stop driving gasoline cars *today* or else we will die!", I don't feel like the population will all conform to what's better for us. We seem to wait for bad things to happen before we act, especially when it comes to us spending our hard-earned cash on anything less than a flamboyant SUV. But when that day does come, which it inevitably will as long as we're relying on gasoline for transportation, at least we'll have had a past of these kinds of people working hard to make that transfer period a little less....chaotic.

now I can eat breakfast on the go!

-Ever-,
...well stated comment there.
Thanks!

Ok here are the raw facts about biodiesel and vegetable oil and the nature...i've been studying this for quite awhile.

Ok first of all the diesel engine was first made to run on peanut oil. The reason why plant oil was not further used is the petro companies where just starting to get into refining oil for gasoline and everything in the sun...so making petro diesel was kind of a natural thing.

Yes running your car/truck or whatever on straight vegetable oil isn't just dump it in the tank and go. The problem is it's thick as hell. So you need to filter the shit outta it and heat it up so it thins up....just like Shakran said.

Biodiesel is not perfect.....here are the following problems so far that they have found out with it.
First problem it gels up in cold weather...but with some more development people will easily find a way to make anti gelling compound just for biodiesel.

Reduction in gas mileage....it's about 10% but in a VW Jetta TDI that gets about 45mpg it only drops it down to about 41.5 mpg which still isn't bad.

Heres why biodiesel will prevail.....and hopefully soon i'm in the effort actually.

We throw away tons of vegetable oil that can be refined, plus we can make it from all types of oil, canola, soybean, hemp you name it......that in turn can all be made in the country...not from venezula, not from and arab country....but right here in the good ol' USA.......

How much does it cost you might ask? about 70cent a gallon...hell if you mark it up and tax the shit outta it...it will be still very effective pricing...

Is biodiesel harmful to an engine and what is needed to convert your vehicle to run on it? If there is no rubber components in the fuel system........no worries.....it actually helps engines last longer due to it's better lubricity.

Actually alot of pumps in Europe I have heard blends biodiesel with normal diesel to save fuel costs.

Why aren't we doing more of it........well not really big oil......it's more of an opec issue...if you think about it opec is mostly countries that aren't rich as us or europe.....most of the opec countries rely on oil to make a nice living....we dont' buy from them....they don't thrive.....they don't thrive they get pissed off.

Right now i'm working on using butterfat to make biodiesel (it's a type of fat so I am going to try to use it to make biodiesel) if I can get that to work....my dad's company can produce over 1000 gallons of biodiesel a week at full blown production. Which would save a ton on fuel costs.

Now maybe McDonalds will make the switch in their deep fryers...

I think that group of kids was from Trenton, NJ. Too bad they didn't come up with a car that runs from crack, heroin, bullets or gang colors they seem to have an endless suppy of that there.

Irrelevant and inappropriate.

Now, moving on, in high school last year I visited Middle Tennessee State University on an Ag trip. We visited their Biofuel program. They actually started experimenting with it in the late seventies. They hold nearly every land speed record for vehicles run off alternative fuels. Their first car, a Vette named Flash, ran off corn oil. And let me tell you, this thing is no pansy hybrid. They cranked it up for us and it is fucking MEAN. I shit you not. It will fly too. As a matter of fact, their next project is a car that will run off water. Yeah, water. They dream pretty big down there, and they've had really good success. The problem is just going to be the mainstream conversion, as has been said.

i don't know if ethanol is considered a biodeisel (since it is made out of corn), but i'm pretty sure it's no vegetable oil...and I think it's safe to say we're a helluva lot closer to switching to that than anything else. It surprises me that barely anybody has even heard of E85 (85 percent ethanol, 15 percent gas). There are pumps for this stuff too (yes actual gas stations that pump this stuff), and it takes a whole let less work on your car to use it than any other fuel substitute. There have been ethanol plants springing up all over here in nebraska too. I think it's safe to say that ethanol is the next big thing (much more realistic than vegetable oils anyway).

Ethanol is used inf Flex Fuel vehicles, I think the government is required to buy a certain amount of those a year... and runs in a modified gasoline engine (I've seen mostly tauruses with it).

Biodiesel will work in any diesel engine, usually with some slight modifications to account for it's particular characteristics (I hope to use it in my jetta in 2 years once the drivetrain warranty is done).

Neil Young is currently on tour, and his whole tourgoup is running off biodiesel.

And here is a guy who thinks the whole US could be made to run on biodiesel from algae: http://www.unh.edu/p2/biodiesel/article_alge.html

The only problem with ethanol is that it talkes alot of energy to make it, it's not a good ratio. Also you just can't simply put ethanol in any engine and expect it to run. Usually you have to have your whole fuel system converted.

I think you've been sucked into myths about the energy ratio of ethanol.
http://www.mda.state.mn.us/ethanol/balance.html

Fuel Energy yield Net Energy (loss) or gain
Gasoline 0.805 (19.5 percent)
Diesel 0.843 (15.7 percent)
Ethanol 1.34 34 percent
Biodiesel 3.20 220 percent

this site (http://www.nwicc.cc.ia.us/Module2.htm) says we can get up to a 2.51 ratio or 151% gain with state-of-the-art farming techniques and ethanol production. Also, that 1.34 is a little old and it's now much closer to 1.4. Now, considering the ratio of gasoline, I wouldn't say that's a bad ratio at all :).

You're right you can't put ethanol into any engine and make it run...but you can't put anything else but gasoline into them and make it run either. It's still a challenge, but it's easier to get a car to run on ethanol than most anything else. This site has a lot of good info on it...(and apparently it's technically illegal to convert an unleaded gas only car to ethanol for lack of emissions approval kits).
http://www.e85fuel.com/faq.htm
Also, some manufacturers are already making cars that can run on E85 or unleaded. I'd say that's a pretty big step over conversion kits of other biofuels. Shoot, I'm just gonna copy and paste that info too just cause it's so cool.
This is on the faq site i posted above.

I really don't know why this stuff isn't more widely known. The only reason why I know so much is because I live in nebraska and cause my brother was captain of the U of Nebraska's ethanol team (they built a silverado that ran on E85 that was featured in car and driver). I just think it's a big conspiracy by big oil to keep it unknown.

Wouldn't suprise me at all...we could knock down foreign oil consumption while saving money..but seems like nobody cares.