On my morning commute Friday I passed a large tanker truck with “powered by biodiesel” written on the back. It was owned by a biodiesel company, the name which escapes me now. I thought it was pretty cool running a vehicle on vegetable oil. Today, I got an email from the City of Raleigh’s recycling mailing list with a link to the Greasecar, a kit that will let you burn biodiesel in your your diesel engine.
Like a lot of things, there’s a trick to it. The diesel engine has already be warm in order for it to burn biodiesel. And it only works with mechanically-injected diesel engines. All in all, these are small caveats for the privilege of using essentially free fuel!
Maybe there’s an upside to having a McDonald’s on every corner, after all.
Glad you’re interested in the wonderful world of biofuels. A couple of points of correction:
Biodiesel is vegetable oil in which the glycerol has been replaced with methanol — it basically makes the veg oil lighter or “more watery”. This fuel can be run in ANY DIESEL ENGINE without making any modification. The only caveat is that cars made before 1994 may need to have some rubber parts of the fuel system replaced with more modern materials — biodiesel has a slightly more solvent-like nature than petrol diesel. Another consideration is that old vehicles which have always run petrol diesel, biodiesel may free up petroleum crud which has built up over the life of the car, requiring replacement of the fuel filter.
Diesel engines can be modified to run on straight vegetable oil (SVO) — yes, right out of a bottle from the supermarket (although most people get their stuff from restaurants for free after they’re done with it, which requires filtering the oil. This is the conversion that the greasecar kit is for.
Happy fueling 🙂
Once again, I am amazed at what I learn from my own blog. Thanks!