Vegetable Oil For Fuel

[Jeff Bayley]

I apologize if this topic has already been hashed over. I imagine this topic may have come up before but doing a search for "vegetable" and “biodiesel” didn't produce any relevant results. If someone knows where a thread for this exist then I can read it.

A friend of mine who likes to tinker with things recently bought a dually diesel truck that had been converted to run on vegetable oil. He says it works and runs great. I haven't read the whole site yet but one company that makes the kits has a web site at www.frybrid.com (like hybrid but with an f). Some buses and RV's have been converted but no Prevosts. I have a feeling that you guys are going to have some good reasons why this is a bad idea although I'm not sure why yet. Probably makes the injectors or pump go bad ? The knee jerk reaction is that you would have to be crazy to pump vegetable oil into your Prevost I suppose and that this is probably a recipe for pain and aggravation. Since I've got to replace the engine in my blow 94 Prevost (found a good used engine) I'm thinking that this would be a good time to provision if to run on vegetable oil but I have a feeling this idea is going to get thoroughly shot down.

My post went on to outline the details of how the system works, where you get the oil, my thoughts on the cost/benefit of the whole thing and a bunch of other stuff that most of you are already familiar with or have already thought about so I deleted a bunch of content that is non essential and just made the post long and not extra long.

If it works, it makes more sense for a bus than a regular truck since the process of finding oil and refilling is only every 250 gallons and not every 25 gallons in a regular truck. The mileage is less than diesel I read and that web site also has information on the legality of the fuel although it is
clear is that Sulfur Oxides are reduced 100% and that burning SVO only releases the amount of Carbon that is absorbed from the atmosphere by the crop that produced the oil, in other words SVO is Carbon neutral.

The web site suggest that there is a 5-10% loss of power. By the way, that web site has a forum that uses the exact same forum software as the POG site so navigating around it is a cinch.

If you towed a pick up truck as the toad and installed a huge fuel tank in the bed of the truck (which they make for this purpose already) then you could tow another 250 gallons (or more?) of oil around with you and provision the filter system in the bed of the truck as well. The restaurants evidently already have tanks for this around the back of their places for collecting the waste oil and are more than happy to have you take it off their hands. Still, the idea of "mining" for your oil seems a little tedious if you’re always in this town or the other. The places that haul the oil away are called rendering companies and are source to buy the oil from although I have no idea what they charge or if they filter if for you. I think many of them have a model for eventually selling biodiesel to the public. Cancel that. I’m searching for stuff while writing this. I must be a real green horn on the subject. Biodiesel is only about 20% blend and 80% diesel. You can use this with no modification I guess. Here’s another web site for the dum and dummers like me. http://www.nbb.org/

[Petervs]

Go for it! The main drawback I have heard ( smelled?) to biodiesel is that your exhaust smells like McDonalds french fries. If you do not have an objection to everyone thinking you are eating a whole lot of ftrench fries while you drive down the interstate then there is no reason no to do this conversion.

You might be spending a little more money on fuel filters than with regular diesel. The fuel companies spend quite a bit on QC, the variances on vegetable oil are likely to be greater.

If the diesel/oil split is 80/20; and you need to buy more filters; and the fuel economy suffers by a little because the fuel has lower BTUs; then the overall economy improvement might be in the trivial range. You might get the same result slowing from an average 65 mph to 55 mph as we discussed in previous threads.

But please do it and then report back. If you are hugely successful we will surely all copy you! Imitation is the highest form of flattery , right?

Peter vS

[MangoMike]

Jeffman,

Between my joints I generate about 250 gallons a week in used oil.

Make the conversion and stop by for a free fill up. No french fry smell - but a great aroma of Conch Fritters following you down the road.

mm

[JIM CHALOUPKA]

So Jeff, What do you do when you need fuel and you can't get any of your cooking oil. Will regular diesel still work? How about the generator and webasto heater, can they be converted as well. I think you want to sell the bus after you install a new engine? Did you think about who would be interested in buying it. Tell me one more time why do you want to do this conversion?? Buy a restaurant and generate your own fuel then it would be free. Go for it. JIM

[garyde]

It only makes sense for commuter vehicles where you have a renewable resouce for the oil weekly. If half a dozen people tried this in the same area , they would shortly run out of the resource. Electric vehicles make more sense for commuting, and for larger fuel hogs like trucks and Prevosts, I don't think its a viable alternative.

[Jon Wehrenberg]

If it will burn our diesels can use it as fuel.

The problem is there are some compromises. Peter is right on the money about energy content. But if you can get the stuff cheap enough the only downside is your range between refills is smaller. That is not much of an inconvenience if it knocks some serious Lewbucks off the cost to fill the tank.

But I can see some problems. I used to put on seminars about grease separators such as Mango has for his restaurants and my company probably made more grease interceptors than anybody in the world. First, the stuff (any organic greases, fats, or oils) is very sensitive to temperatures. Under some temperature conditions it stops flowing. So it is probable you need a blend. That may preclude loading up at Mango's, and heading out down the interstate.

If you are talking about new vegetable oils I am not sure the economies are there, and if you are talking about used (recycled) you really need to have a crystal clear picture of the standards. Recycled vegetable oils are not easy or cheap to process. They have all sorts of chemicals (the cleaners used in restaurants is but one source), have abundant solids (finely ground flour is a nasty one to remove), and some oils have an affinity for water.

The principle objection I would have to vegetable based oils is they clog pipes. Not the itty bitty little pipes and hoses we have on our bus, but 42 inch sewers. And not with a jelly like greasy substance, but with a white or tan hard material that ages into an adobe like material, just the stuff I want in my fuel tank or fuel lines or injectors.

I agree with Peter....try it out and report back.

[Jeff Bayley]

Jim and others-

Why do I want to do this ? Well, I'm as green as green can be on the subject so I'm just at the very begging of the due dilligence process but I guess the reason would be to use another coach I have for going coast to coast frequently doing training seminars and hauling the gear around to the shows. If the fuel cost was close to free then that would pretty much offset the cost of a driver if I were doing say 2-3 seminars a month. Plus, it sort of seems like a near project I guess.

I talked to someone on the phone right now who I thought for sure would say it was a hair brained idea but he mentioned that Willie Nelson did it to his bus and others also he knew of and that it works great. I think some of these that he mentioned coverted to using a blend like half and half but I'm looking into using straight vegtable oil. One guy on the forum of www.frybrid.com converted his bluebird and I guesss it's working great. Went coast to coast and used about $50 worth of diesel. You run on diesel until the veg. oil get's warmed up enough though one of several various systems in order to thin out, flow and burn up.

Regarding the generator and the webasco, I wouldn't think about converting these. I can see the generator down the road but the Webasco doesn't seem to be hardy enough to bear this. The vegtable oil is supposed to have superior lubrication to the fuel which anyone would find easy to belive.

I'm thinking that you would leave the bus tanks and everything as is instead of provisiong the bus with the neccessary holding tanks for the vegtable oil and then again using bay space for the needed filtration system. I like the idea of putting the still and the tanks in the bed of a pick up truck and then you could easliy run around any given town and collect the oil as well as have a toad (which I don't pull one at all now). Then I would provision quick connects for the alt. fuel supply and another one for the return of the unused oil to the holding tanks on the truck bed. I guess you would need several solenoids that would switch between normal mode and toad supply mode. If it doesn't work, I haven't modeifed the bus for nothing and if it does work you can move the toad vehicle between as many buses as you want (I have several) without doing all the tanks and filter installations on each bus.

[Jon Wehrenberg]

Willie was using bio-diesel, typically a blend, not available everywhere, and it was no cheaper than diesel because it is as highly refined as diesel fuel, of which it is mostly comprised. Guys using vegetable oils such as from Mango's deep fryers have a lot of processing they have to do before they just dump it in the tank. That stuff, while free, is a mix of vegetable oils, animal fats, contaminents such as flour or whatever fell into the fryer, possibly cleaning chemicals, and water.

You mentioned the preheating of that stuff, but there is a flip side to that. You need to pray you do not get shut down on a cold day, unless you can purge the entire fuel system with diesel fuel, because if you do not do what is effectively the reverse of the pre-heat you could have your entire set of fuel lines filled with gelled vegetable oil.

[jello_jeep]

Jeff, one great thing about all this, is it makes me feel less anrgy at paying the price for diesel, because it sure seems to me its a helluva lot easier to pull into the Flyin J and fill up, albeit less adventurous

[MangoMike]

There was a story in the Wasington Post a couple of months ago about drivers doing this. They had their favorite restaurants which they visited once a week for a fillup. Seems like they had to do some pre-filterng before it was pumped into the tank, but it didn't seem to be that big of deal. Of course we're talking a vw diesel so it wasn't a whole lot of oil and as Jeff said they still had to use diesel until the oil was warmed. I'll see if I can find the article.

Jon is right about grease getting like cement. We don't have a grease interceptor at Mango's in Alexandria (pre code), so once a quarter we have to take a 3000psi water jet "scraper" hose and run it 200' to the street to keep the 4" pipe clean or it will completely clog. And no we don't dump our used deep fat oil down the drain, it's just the day to day stuff that get's washed off the dishes and pots.

Mike