Greasecar!
I haven’t posted in a while. I’ve been busy with a new job and also working on a redesign of this site. I’ll get back to regular posts in the next few days.
I’ve been intrigued for a few years with the concept of running diesel powered cars with used vegetable oil recycled from restaurants. It works like this:
- The car starts up using normal diesel fuel from the regular tank. After warming up, the system switches to 100% vegetable oil.
- After reaching its destination, the car must purge the vegetable oil from its system and switched back to regular diesel fuel.
Because of the warm up time and purging process, this system will work best for people who drive long distances. People who have very short commutes or are driving just a few blocks may not benefit from this type of system. The thing that intrigues me is that the vegetable oil can be recycled from restaurants. It is a waste product for the restaurants. However, after filtering the fuel is completely free. Restaurants normally have to pay to have the oil disposed of, so they are more than happy to have a resourceful consumer take it off their hands.
More info can be found here and here. Greasecar.com sells DIY conversion kits that owners can install on their cars to take advantage of the technology. I’m not a car-guy; I don’t even change my own oil. So this could be a daunting task if I were ever to attempt it. I’ve considered buying a beater car and giving it a shot to see if I can do it.
This is not something at the top of my list. I may never actually do it, but it’s an interesting concept.
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