Onwards and Upwards for Fuel $$$$$$

[Jeff Bayley]

I wonder if coach owners would buy toad trucks with aux tanks and the filtering system and pay to have the minor mods done to let their diesels run on waste vegetable oil. One diesel pusher did it (not with the toad but by using his bay space for the required tanks). You can drive indefinitley for free as long as your willing to go around and collect the oil which is why I like the idea of mounting the whole thing on a truck. You use the truck to chase down the oil instead of hunting around with a full size rig. There are several web sites and forums where they not only list places to collect oil nationwide (chinesse restaurants are supposed to have cleaner oil) but they also have people that already have refined (and unrefined) oil that give it away. The collect more than they can use for their family (most of them have several diesel cars in the family that have all been converted to run on waste vegatable oil.

My idea (I've posted this before) is to run remote lines from the tanks in the bed of the truck to some quick connects on the rear of the bus. The still runs on regular diesel and once your on the road you flip the switch and convert over to running on oil.

Turns out the Diesel engine was invented to run on any kind of oil when it premered at a Word Fair around 1900 and the petrolum industry came up with diesel fuel after the fact. The inventor of this oil running engines last name was Diesel. The oil has more lubrication than diesel and the only down side seems to be collecting the oil but the restaurants give it away to you for free out of the speical hopper they have around the rear they collect it in.

It seems to me that retired folks (the majority of coach owners ?) would be even more inclined to do this since it gives them something to do assuming that you can find some entertainment value in getting around town to collect the oil.

I'm still working and when I weigh out the time vs savings I'm not sure it pays for me but the challenge of seeing if I can make it work has some appeal to me.

[merle&louise]

I'll just throw a thought out here for Jeff or anyone else who has an opinion:

What about instead of the customer driving around looking for used cooking oil - a truck stop would be built that sells used cooking oil ($1.00/gallon). The truck stop could collect the used oil from surrounding restaurants and sell it to truckers whose rigs are designed to run on the stuff.

First problem I see is: who is going to build a truck stop to sell used cooking oil to a handful of converted vehicles. And conversely, who is going to convert their rig to run on used cooking oil if there is no supply! Seems like we just hit brick wall #1.

It kind of makes you wonder though, how did the gasoline/diesel business ever get started? The same problems were present at the beginning of that era.

Who knows, maybe when diesel gets to $10 or $15 per gallon somebody may try it.

Any thoughts?

[Jeff Bayley]

Not enough critical mass I guess but if I were in independent trucker, for sure I would figure out the vegetable oil think. I men, you could have a 500 gallon installed in the front of your trailer easily along with the filtering system. For the fuel station, they would make a lot more money on the oil as I belive their mark up on the fuel is (at the station level) is very very low.

There are companies out there starting to pay for the oil from restarurants rather than the other way around (the rest. paying to have it hauled off) and they are taking this oil and using it for biodiesel or something. The days of getting it for free aren't coming any time soon but maybe a few years from now the stuff will finally get perceived as worth something. Right now it's a free for all and I suspect will be for some time.

This conversion would make a lot of sense if I were to get a twin diesel yacht to try to live on but the problem I see there is your limited to collecting oil from water front restaurants and how to get the oil from their bin to your boat. Not quite as easy as pulling a truck right up next to their collection bin. A 45-60' yacht probabley is a real hog and makes our buses look like Honda Civics I suppose. Sure would be nice to be able to take a cruice from FL to Mexico or Central America by boat (1,000 nautical miles straight across the Gulf from Tampa Bay I recall) and know your cruising for free.

Back to the buses, do you guys think that bus (or diesel motor home owners in general) would be willing to pay for a turn key converstion including a truck toad with all the fixings on it ? I think there would be enough demand for someone to make a business out of it and pocket $10k per transaction. Aren't any of your retired engineer types eager to try this for the hell of it ? Of course it makes the most sense for full timers or people that put a lot of miles (or would put a lot of miles if the fuel cost is stopping them).

Personally, if the fuel went to $10 a gallon it would'nt change my travel habits but I think there are others that would drive more if it was cheaper.........scratch that...........FREE.

[MangoMike]

At just one joint I generate about a 100 gallons a week in used oil I wonder if it was filtered and ready to pump if someone would pay $1 a gallon for it? RIght now I'm paying someone to haul it away.

I'm sure some regulatory agency either in the city/state/feds would have an issue my sale.

The jiffy oil change place next to me sells his used auto oil for 25¢ a gallon. (and no he doesn't sell it to me for my deep fryers).

Mike

[dale farley]

A few months ago, I decided to collect the cooking oil locally and manufacturer biodiesel for my equipment around the farm. Every place I contacted already had a company from Mobile, AL paying them a small amount for the oil. I was not able to find anyone willing to give or sell me the oil in any quantity that would justify the production of biodiesel. I am still looking for alternatives but haven't come with anything so far.

[MangoMike]

Dale,

The restaurant guys would probably jump ship for the right price. I can't believe that the company picking up their oil are paying hardly anything.

MIke

[Jon Wehrenberg]

There are vey large companies in the business of obtaining and processing grease, fats and oils from restaurants.


These companies pump the grease traps or empty containers of waste cooking oils and they clean the collected material by removing the solids, dewatering it, and then selling it to companies that use that material for such products as fertilizer, animal feeds, munitions, cosmetics, lamp oil, etc.

The theories sound great, but it isn't going to be a fuel source for us anytime soon.

[Jeff Bayley]

John-

Here are just two sites with hundreds of members that are in fact making it a fuel source for themselves right now. Not mainstream at the pump mind you, but they have it wired on the back end. This is not a pipe dream. I think the petroleum industry and media have done a sufficient job keeping it on the hush hush and it's probabley a good thing that more people don't do this and jump on the band wagon. As pointed out on some of the posts here, the oil is in fact becoming more in demand and some people are paying for it.

On the fill up for free site (below is the link) you'll find people that are giving away free oil becuase I think they've made a "deal" with these restaurants to commit to "take it all or don't take it at all" and this is why they wind up with more oil than they can use and they are practically beging people to take oil off their hands.

Both of these sites have forums.

http://fillup4free.com

www.frybrid.com

[Jon Wehrenberg]

There are areas not served by renderer's. Remote areas do not lend themselves to waste FOG (fats, oils, greases) collection. So the restaurantuer welcomes a place to get rid of his fryer oils.

I can't speak for others on this forum, but having served the industry by manufacturing grease traps I got to gain more than a passing knowledge of it. This is not a product you will ever want to put through your Series 60 without some serious effort. Mike will chime in here if he has the time, but even fryer oils, which are the cleanest of the materials that compromise FOG are nasty. Depending on the use of the oils, they can be heavily contaminated with various food scraps, or worse, flour from breaded and deep fried foods.

You will not want to contemplate what will happen if you try to pass that material through your fuel system or engine, nor will you want to contemplate the process renderers employ to clean those oils of the various contaminents, including high temperature heating and processing in a centrifuge. The materials must go through a rather complex series of gravity separators to get the crud out of them.

Somebody that needs a limited amount to run a Volkswagen Rabbit can tolerate the effort. He may even find very clean oils, because he needs so little relatively speaking. For your bus you need a lot. In fact you need about 25% more than the amount of diesel fuel you use due to the difference of BTU content.

Except for government buses where costs are paid for by taxpayers and the use of vegetable oils makes the tree huggers feel good while they ride the bus and smell armpits, it ain't for me.

[Joe Cannarozzi]

Hor Rod TV did a show on a system you can buy. It was a plastic cone shaped hopper on a stand with mabye 50 or 60 gal capacity.

They had to process the stuff, don't quote me but I think they added lye, or something that made reaction, and after a certian amount of time drained off the good product and had a certian amount of waste by product.

They also had to install a heating element on the vehical for the stuff to flow through.