Growing or Gathering Waster Oil from restaurants.
Pre-Filtering Waste Vegetable Oil (WVO)
The Diesel Engine Conversion
Growing or Gathering Waste Vegetable Oil from Restaurants
The first step to converting your diesel engine to run on veggie oil, is to actually collect it. This can be done in a number of ways.
Buy the oil new from restaurant supply companies. The oil costs you about $3.00 a gallon this is not very cost effective and difficult to find while traveling.
If you have access to land you can grow crops of corn, soy, cottonseed, etc. for oil production. This is a lot of work, but this is being done to produce commercial biodiesel. If you were to explore this option you would need to build or acquire an oil press. Oil presses are expensive but a good investment for serious long-term greasers. This form of grease rendering is very sustainable and self-sufficient.
The free fuel method, collect waste fryer oil from restaurants! This is the process that I am going to primarily focus on. ***WARNING*** This can become a messy hobby. So, if you have ever worked a food service job, you know that the cooking oil needs to be changed regularly. So what happens to that oil? Well most of the time it is dumped into black “grease only” dumpsters, or black metal barrels: BLACK METAL. The restaurants contract grease collection companies to come and remove the “waste” weekly or monthly. The restaurant has to pay these companies to dispose of it. This is where the “greaser” comes into the picture. Every town, and every city, in every state there are restaurants ready and willing to give up the grease. So finding waste veggie oil is as easy to find as pulling up to a gasoline service station.
So I pull into a town and start my search for grease dumpsters. These dumpsters will be located in the back of the establishment. The type of oil that you want to find is non-hydrogenated. This means that is in liquid form at room temp. Forget fast food chains; they usually use animal fat for cooking which is not suitable for the fuel tank. I prefer any Asian food restaurants, mostly buffets.
I have a 12-volt diesel fuel transfer pump that works great for pumping the grease out of the dumpsters. I carry three 55gallon drums, so at anytime I have 100-150 gallons of grease onboard.
Gravity. Heard of it? Well once you collect the oil you need to pre-filter it. Gravity is the first step. The majority of the sediment and food particles will settle to the bottom of your container. Settle the oil for as long as possible, (2 weeks-2months)
Then: PUMP IT OFF THE TOP
Out of a 55 gallon barrel the bottom five of ten gallons is unusable, and is returned to the grease dumpster.
Now you have this settled oil, now it needs to pre-filtered. You can do this by straining the oil restaurant paper cone filters, filter socks, or spin on filters.
Here is what I do: I pump from the 55-gallon drums into a homemade pressure tank built from an old beer keg. This allows me to pressurize the oil to about 40PSI, and can push the oil through a series of filters. This pressure tank saves $ on transfer pumps that can burn out after time. Then the oil is pushed through a series of screen mesh irrigation filter/sprayer filters. (You can find these at any farm store) Instead of pricy automotive spin of filters, I have a Franz toilette paper filter. You can find these for cheap in almost any wrecking yard. They were used in older trucks to filter the lubricating oil. They use a roll of TP, so they are free, or damn cheap.
The Key to running WVO in a diesel engine is HEAT to lower the oil viscosity.
In order for the WVO to fully burn, the combustion chamber of a diesel engine must reach 2000F. There for, if you do not pre-heat the oil to 150-180F inside the veggie tank, the oil will be too cold and think and will not fully combust in the chamber. Cold oil results in less power, engine stalling, and potential clogging and coking on the injectors.
Next time you are cooking in a cast iron pan; notice the viscosity of the vegetable oil at room temperature. Now compare it at cooking temp 200-400F. When the oil is hot, it moves around easier, is thinner etc. Now if you heat the oil in the pan too hot, you can start a grease fire. Vegetable oil will not light at room temperature, but once heated up; no problem.
How do we adapt this knowledge of “oil viscosity” into a diesel vehicle?
You need to install a secondary HEATED fuel system: this is done by rerouting the engine coolant lines to heat your WVO tank, and fuel lines. You leave the original diesel system; so you can switch between the diesel tank and veggie tank at any time.
You need to install:
WVO heated tank
Heated WVO filter
Heater WVO fuel lines
Fuel selector switch.
Electric Heaters (optional)
1992 Chevy 6.2 Diesel Step Van
I have done a number of conversions on my truck. Right now I have a 28-gallon marine fuel tank that I got from a boat salvage yard(50$). I found a radiator heater core in another scrap yard (20$), and installed it inside the WVO tank. This heats this tank to above 110F.
Next I installed a Vormax heated filter(200$). This is a filter that was designed for extra filtration on semi-trucks. This filter consists of a cyclonic filter bowl, and a replaceable paper mesh automotive spin on filter.
The next step is to install heated WVO fuel lines.
I installed a heated Hose in Hose (HIH) fuel lines. The HIH means that you are running the WVO inside the coolant hose. This is an extremely good heat transfer, and space efficient. I used Teflon tubing for the WVO lines(20$), and ran the fuel line inside standard rubber coolant hose(20$). Using T’s and compression fittings, you can install a leak free system.
The fuel selector switch. This can be done with an electric solenoid, or ball valves. I installed a Pollack 6 port electric solenoid (30$). This allows me to switch between diesel, and WVO with a toggle switch on my dashboard. I have also seen conversions using a manual ball valve. This makes it harder to switch between fuels faster, but can be reliable. The electric solenoids have been known to fail.
Next I installed a 12 Volt electric flash heater called a Veg-Therm(100$). I bought this heater from a company called Neoteric in California. It is a nice little heater that helps heat the oil faster. Another option to this purchased item, is building an electric heater using glow plug heaters. Glow plugs are used in diesel engines to heat the air before the combustion chamber. The idea is to install a T in the fuel line, with a glow plug heater in one side. This is much more cost effective than a Veg-Therm.
So, after all said and done: I start the engine on diesel/Bio-diesel. The engine takes about 10 minuets to reach operating temperature. Once the WVO is hot, I can flip the switch and be running on grease. I installed a temperature sensor, so I know how hot the vegetable oil is.
1982 Mercedes Benz 300SD Turbo Diesel
This is the most recent conversion that we have done. We picked up the car in New Mexico, and dug into it right away. It was a very inexpensive conversion, and took about 2 weeks of collecting parts and installing them.
The heated tank is a 7 gallon circular aluminum tank with 3/8 copper tubing coiled inside. This makes for an efficient engine coolant heat exchange. Then the WVO is pumped out of the tank by a 12 Volt universal fuel pump into (3/8 copper) tubing that travels inside of the (5/8 rubber) coolant hose. The Oil is pumped through this heat exchange into a Coolant heated Fuel Filter. At this point the WVO is at about 150F. Coming out of the filter the oil comes to a fuel sector valve that is hooked to a toggle switch on the dash board. The oil is sent to the engine at about 160-170F, then the return fuel from the injectors is looped back into the send line to maintain heat.
So the same process: Start the car on DinoDiesel/Biodiesel, drive for about 15 min then flip the switch. Smell the freedom. When you turn off don’t forget to flip back to Diesel to clean out the Injectors and engine.
Don’t try to fool your self. With every vehicle you have to do maintenance. The main thing that you need to do is make sure that you flip that switch back to diesel when you are done driving on WVO. When the engine cools down so does the oil. It is very hard on the engine to start cold on the thick oil. Also this purge time cleans out the injectors which need to be clean for optimal performance.
Change your engine oil on time
I change my engine oil and filter every 3,000 miles. This helps with engine wear and tare and maintains the life of the vehicle. Any diesel engine with regular oil changes will last a life time.
Injectors
This
is the big one. Yes they do get dirty, it’s called coking. When
there is un-burnt fuel in the pre-chambers and chamber carbon will
build up on the injector needles. After about 40,000 miles in my
truck I rebuilt my fuel injectors and they needed it. But if you
purge the oil after driving, and have oil that is 170F + injector
coking is virtually eliminated.
Fuel Filters
The vegetable oil fuel filters need to be checked and changed when necessary. This can be minimized by good pre-filtering. On average I change filters every 2,000-3,000 miles. You can feel when the filter is clogged when you have hesitation and loss of power. It is not a hard job, and inexpensive.
There has been little or no test done here in Americon about vegetable oil. There for information is extremely limited on this subject. Most of the tests have been done by individuals. A test in Canada shows that Vegetable released 40% less soot than regular diesel, and 50-75% less Carbon Monoxide pollution.
Rudolf Diesel (1858-1913) was the inventor of the Diesel engine, originally designed it to run on peanut oil in 1897. The diesel engine was 75% more efficient than coal steam engines, and the fuel could be easily grown and processed by farmers. Rudolf Diesel died unexpectedly by falling off a ship, and it is suspected that was assassinated by individuals involved in the petroleum industry.
The diesel engine runs as good if not better on vegetable oil. It can climb hills, and pass semi trucks on grease. There is no power difference between dino-diesel, and Waste Vegetable Oil. The vegetable oil is also more lubricating than the overly processed petrol on today’s market. To date there are thousands of Diesel engines being converted to run on Waste Vegetable Oil. You could convert one too. Many other countries “not the USA” are beginning programs that encourage more sustainable energy production. Canada Transportation has launched: “Moving on sustainable transport”. They estimate that over 70% of green house gasses that are destroying the O-Zone are automobile related. In Germany you can buy new vegetable oil and Bio-diesel at the pump.
There are a few things you want to consider when converting a diesel engine to run on WVO:
What sort of climate do you live in? Colder climates mean you need to heat the vegetable oil more, and it is harder to collect. Collecting oil in Arizona in the winter is much easier than Minnesota. Conversions still run good in colder climates, you just need a hotter conversion. I have driven my truck in snow and ice, below freezing, and it still runs.
What sort of vehicle do you intend to convert? Don’t buy a clunker piece of crap. What is more expensive than converting a vehicle is fixing all the other non related items. Cars are expensive. I broke down in California multiple, and have had to replace the fuel injection pump, and water pump. It all comes in the game.
What is your vegetable oil source?
There are a number of ways to begin the conversion process. There a few online companies that provide already built kits, these are easy, but pricy. I decided do go the DIY way, and build the entire conversion from junk yards. This is cheaper, but I have made a fare share of mistakes. But of all the times we broke down, I always got it running again. It takes time, but it is worth it not supporting the death oil culture. I built the entire conversion for under 500$, and have gone over 37,000 miles on waste vegetable oil. If you calculate that many miles at 3.00$ a gallon, your looking at about 10,000$ in just fuel cost.
Be part of the change. Join the Free Revolution. Stop burning unsustainable fuel sources. It’s easy, fun, and free.
Links for information, and conversion kits
http://www.withinsightvideo.com/
www.chimp.tk
www.fryoil.org
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