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/