It's no secret to the majority of our readers that it is possible to run many older diesel engines on nothing more than straight vegetable oil. In fact, the first diesel engine, invented by Rudolph Diesel, ran on peanut oil. This fact is also well known by the students at the Michigan Technical Academy who have converted their own school buses to run on waste vegetable oil. Garden Fresh Foods in Ferndale, Michigan is providing used veggie oil that was first used to fry tortilla chips for no charge. The total cost of the fuel for the two buses that are running on 100-percent veggie oil is estimated at about 80-cents a gallon. Other buses are running on a 10-percent blend of oil and diesel fuel. As the temps in Michigan go down, the blend will be adjusted, though the students are currently hard at work solving that problem with heaters. Great work.

[Source: The Detroit News]

Police in Manila, the capitol city of the Philippines, have taken up a cool new effort in order to save some green, though they will be spreading some green in the process. It seems that the Police force will be converting its cruisers to run on a mixture of waste vegetable oil (WVO) and diesel fuel. The oil in question will be donated by McDonalds. Other local area restaurants are also considering making similar donations. So far, just one vehicle has had the conversion done, though more are likely to closely follow. If the program in Manila proves successful, other nearby cities are likely to follow suit.

If the government authorities begin using veggie oil, how far could commercial use be behind? Along with the electric Jeepneys which are now proliferating through city centers in the area, the Philippines may just have a green-transportation revolution on their hands.

[Source: Breitbart.com]

Click on the image for high-res shots of this diesel 1967 Mercury Cougar

Much of the vegetable oil and biodiesel movement centers around the classic Mercedes-Benz inline six cylinder engine, but fine examples of the genre are getting tougher to find. As is always the case with older machines, time and driving in general take their toll on the bodies and chassis of our favorite classics. But, these old Mercedes lumps can be rebuilt to fine running order. Wondering what to do with that good-running or rebuilt turbodiesel engine? How about dropping it into the engine bay of some classic Detroit iron? Many of these older American vehicles were built with engine-bays capable of accepting everything from a straight-six to a huge big block V8 engine. If that sounds like too much trouble, perhaps you should take a look at an example that's already been converted. Right now on Craigslist in L.A. is a cherry 1967 Mercury Cougar with a Mercedes OM617 cast iron turbodiesel engine from a Mercedes-Benz 300SD. Mated to a four-speed manual tranny, we'd imagine that many trouble-free miles of burbling diesel goodness are in store for this particular gem. Thanks for the tip, Geeky1!


[Source: Craigslist]

Mythbusters, a popular TV show on the Discovery Channel, tried to bust the myth that there are devices out there that can dramatically improve your fuel economy. I think Mythbusters made a lot of mistakes in the episode with claims about hydrogen, used vegetable oil and EPA testing. I also think they did bad experiments and should have done more research.

Lets start with hydrogen: As you can see in the above video, after making a car turn over by hosing hydrogen into the carburetor, Adam proclaims "I guess you could, if you had a lot of hydrogen, run your engine completely without any other modification." The experiment they did is interesting but there is no reason to make the claim that a car can run unmodified on hydrogen. Who would consider the installation of a hydrogen fuel tank on a car un-modified anyway? They could have mentioned hydrogen combustion engines and fact that there is serious research on using hydrogen in gas cars.

Now, about the used vegetable oil. Adam got used vegetable oil from a restaurant, filtered it and ran a diesel car on it. They claim just 10 percent less fuel economy and Adam said "we did not make any modifications to this car. That means anybody who had a diesel car could just pure this stuff into the gas tank and it would run fine." Again, like the hydrogen experiment, interesting but it's not that simple. You can use vegetable oil in a diesel engine and it does work but there is a small industry of people that do conversions to diesel engines to make sure there are no long term damage to your car when running on VegOil. Why not mention them? Also, mileage really depends on the type of oil you use but I doubt a 10 percent reduction in fuel economy is accurate for everyone.

Go below the fold for more mistakes.

[Source: MythBusters]

As a blogger for AutoblogGreen, I read about waste vegetable oil used as a car fuel daily but I have to admit to a "WTF?" moment when reading about details of what fuels were used by San Francisco's new fully biodiesel-capable fleet. According to the New York Times, the fleet uses virgin soy from the Midwest in a B20 mix ... and the city of San Francisco wants your used grease. Cue the sound of a record player needle being loudly pushed off an LP. They want what?

Yes, the Times writes about the new SFGreasecycle, which you will remember was launched in November with a website run by the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, that will collect waste vegetable oil from homes and restaurants for free and convert it to biodiesel. This is the first city-wide program that collects used veggie oil for its car fleet, an activity usually seen as something done by small garage companies. If you have not seen or don't recall the hilarious 1977 movie The Kentucky Fried Movie, enjoy the predictive powers of comedy in a clip below the fold.

I am not making fun of San Francisco because I think this is a good program. They have the greenest car fleet in the nation. It will save money, reduce waste and hopefully inspire more agencies and companies to collect waste vegetable oil but can you imagine the average Joe reading about this program in the Times? WTF!

[Source: New York Times]

So, they've made ads that are dumb, and possibly even offensive, depending on who you ask, and they just opened their first B20 station recently. But San Francisco is really putting some effort into greening their city. The newest evidence of this fact is that the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) will be collecting much of the city's waste vegetable oil (WVO) and using it as a base to create biodiesel. This biodiesel will then be used in a B20 blend to power the city's bus fleet.

This could be a big environmental and economic benefit. To wit: "SFPUC official Lewis Harrison stated that at least 1 million gallons of biodiesel could be produced from left-over restaurant grease, which is "more than enough" to run the city's entire bus fleet on B20. Since WVO is a waste stream, offsetting petro-diesel usage with WVO biodiesel is particularly advantageous: the use of 1 million gallons of WVO-biodiesel would offset 19,600,000 lbs (9,800 tons) of carbon dioxide emissions each year. It also has significant economic and public health benefits: municipal biodiesel production should beat the $4/gallon price of fuel in San Francisco, and B20 biodiesel blends cut diesel soot emissions by 20-40%."

This quote was taken from an article on Green Options. Click here to check it out.

[Source: Green Options]

Michigan's third biodiesel plant should start producing fuel within the next two weeks in Milan, just south of Ann Arbor. The plant has been in the planning and construction phases for fifteen months and will produce 10,000 to 20,000 gallons a day of biodiesel. Milan biodiesel will initially employ twelve people and sell fuel only to distributors. The owners saved money by buying used and auctioned equipment and got up and running for only $700,000. This plant will be focused on recycling waste vegetable oil which is generally higher grade than oil produced from soy beans since it's primarily canola.

Milan Biodiesel is also affiliated with the Michigan Biodiesel Co-op and some of the fuel will be available for sale locally in the Ann Arbor area, although initially most will be exported to Europe. Co-owner John Bolz has some other interesting related projects in the works that ABG will be following up on in the coming weeks. We'll also visit the plant, once they're up and running.

[Source: Ann Arbor News]

Our cousins over at Engadget spotted a story on Slashdot about a family of five who made a cross-country trek from Seattle to Rhode Island in luxury motor home. The remarkable thing is that they did it while spending only $47 on diesel fuel. If you've ever gone on a trip in one of these monster machines, you know you'd have a hard time making it across town on $47 worth of diesel, much less across the country.

AutoblogGreen was naturally on the story a while back, but the gist is that the Adler family bought a used 1997 forty foot RV and with parts from Frybrid, he converted it run on waste vegetable oil. The conversion kit includes new fuel tanks and filtration equipment so that they could fill the machine at any restaurant and drive away. The family set off on what was supposed to be a three week trip that ultimately took almost three months. Click Read to go over to their site and read the whole sordid tale of their adventure in fry cruising.

Related:

• WVO luxury RV can process waste veggie fuel on the road

[Source: Engadget]

Ed Beggs grew diesel fuel in Ontario on his Canadian farm for years without realizing it. He called it soybeans back then. Today the British Columbia resident knows better. He likes to call it premium diesel fuel. Why the paradigm shift? Because Ed and his U.S. business partner, Craig Reece, operate PlantDrive, one of the premier companies producing Straight Vegetable Oil/Waste Vegetable Oil (SVO/WVO) conversion kits and components for fueling diesel engines with straight plant oil.

Conversion kit is really a misnomer. Auxiliary fuel system is more accurate since the vehicle gets an additional fuel line and fuel tank. The modified vehicle totes plant oil in a second tank (the stock diesel fuel tank is untouched in most systems) and the auxiliary fuel system is heated while the stock fuel line is left intact. Plant oils like soy and canola, which are similar to regular diesel fuel in that they are liquid at room temperature and have similar BTU content, are about 10-15 times more viscous than No. 2 diesel. Heat is required to reduce the viscosity of the SVO/WVO to a level the diesel engine can accept.

How does it work once the kit is installed? The modified diesel vehicle starts up on a starter fuel of either petroleum diesel or biodiesel drawn from the stock fuel tank, and then switches to the heated vegetable oil fuel once the engine is up to normal temperature.