RV Processes Own Fuel on Cross-Country Trip 165
An anonymous reader writes "Frybrid has realized the dream of Dr. Emmet Brown's Delorean: putting garbage directly into your vehicle, and have it be turned into directly into fuel. This past fall, Frybrid installed a system into a 40' luxury RV that sucked up waste vegetable oil from the back of restaurants, removed the water and filtered it, and then burned the dry and cleaned vegetable oil as fuel. The family drove their converted RV from Seattle to Rhode Island on $47 worth of diesel fuel. Plans are underway for a smaller version of the system to fit in the bed of a pickup truck."
IF (Score:3, Interesting)
Already at many places you can't get it free anymore.
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Yep, and the news will always report the international market price for french fries per barrel.
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Thats just it, it will not catch on and prices will remain low, or at least mostly free.
As it is, Diesel is not a popular technology in the United States. Most consumers in northern states avoid it for fear of jelling in cold weather, and Diesel all-around has gotten a bad reputation for small vehicles. Consumers prefer Gasoline to Diesel. The only place where Diesel is strong is in the transportation industry as just about every transportation truck fleet is Diesel powered. Now, considering that consu
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Also, the more people talk about it, the more interest it will gather. Maybe not all people with diesels will convert, but it is more people aware of it. I have a close friend that I have helped him convert 2 diesels to run off of WVO. We live in the Chicagoland area. First was a 1985 K5 Blazer, the second is and he is currently driving, 2005 Chevy Silverado HD Duramax 25
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In the US, yes. In Europe, 50% of cars sold have diesel engines.
Re:IF (Score:5, Interesting)
Folks, the road to freedom is exactly like this article. Home power production. The aristocrats will continue to make competition illegal. Just take a look at how handily electric power was killed. Hobbyists in the mid-1990's were making cars which could go twice what Ford and GM were able to make. Surprise. Guess a garage is better than a lab! Not to mention the millions to billions of subsidies the country spends on oil and oil-related infrastructure rather than spending such on electric (induction charging stations, power rails, etc).
Technology in this country is presently eliminated by large corporations and the government who works for them. Only by innovations and a concerted citizen adoption and cooperation can innovation be reborn in the USA. The vege-diesel is going to be a big problem for the lawmakers who work for the MNC's because the technology works. People are driving around in trucks powered by vegetable oil. And, yes, saving money. It's a fact.
The government, at least in NY State, has outlawed this. What does that mean? Like Cubans are we under a regime who wants us to stay in the 1900's? Is this like so many science fiction novels where individuals are not allowed to excel. Yes. It exactly is. Soon, perhaps, the personal use of innovative technologies will be made illegal - for the corporate good of course.
TimJowers http://www.serviza.com/ [serviza.com] Fully Loaded Innovation. Power on and GO!
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Now, Tesla motors is looking like it might be able to make electric vehicles popular. It has seemingly sold well, and is good for what it is. Obviously, it is not practical for most things, but it shows
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Which makes me wonder why the local restaurants don't go out and get something like this [treehugger.com] and reduce both their electricity and disposal costs. My only guess is that a) regulations prohibit generator usage or b) the maintenance costs for the generator are higher than the savings.
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The argument about electric cars can be ommitted. A quick search shows vegetable oil is far cheaper TODAY for those using it. The speculation about it would be more expensive if everyone did it is pure speculation. Of course it is probably wrong on face value when any economies of scale are considered but no doubt it ignores the cost of fighti
Incorrect application of the antitrust law (Score:2)
The other problem with this is that it should only apply if th
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Re:IF (Score:5, Informative)
Too bad about the misinformed Northerners. Every place with cold weather that sells diesel fuel switches to "winter blend" when it gets cold. There's other technology to keep fuel from gelling as well.
The reason the diesel has a bad reputation falls squarely on the shoulders of GM, who converted their small block Chevy engine to run on diesel back in the 70's. To say it was a steaming pile of crap would be unfair to the piles of crap. People hated them for good reason, and that's what people remember (as well as a handful of French diesels that sucked almost as much).
If you get away from cities, the use of diesel is far more common. People who drive trucks for work, rather than show, have figured out that diesel is the way to go. My 7,200 pound 4x4 diesel powered work truck gets better mileage than my girlfriend's V-6 gas powered 2 wheel drive Ford Explorer. Better in town and better on the highway. My mileage drops by 2 to 3 mpg (down to 15-16 mpg) if I'm towing 5,000 pounds - but my friends with gas trucks get 6 to 10 mpg with the same load. Gas engines make great horsepower, but Diesels make great torque - and torque is what gets work done.
Now that the US is changing the sulfur content of diesel fuel, we'll be able to get small, diesel powered Euro cars again, and it will be a good thing. A great thing. A friend of mine has a (roughly) 5 year old VW Jetta, and he gets 49 mpg at 70 mph. Better than a hybred, without the hassle of throwing away a bunch of batteries in a handful of years.
Bring on the diesel!
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and you probably tow it easier. I'm in the same (gas) boat towing my RV. If I had any idea that I would have been towing this thing when I bought the truck, it would have been a diesel. Now I just have to find $45,000 in the seat cushions to pay for the diesel pickup I want.
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I don't know what is funnier, the fact that you misspelled hybrid or the fact that you got so much wrong.
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Go to a VW dealer and ask to drive a Diesel. You won't see smoke. You won't see soot. It's a tiny bit louder than a gaas powered car, but not much at all.
The difference between the electrical system in my Dodge with the Diesel option i
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Banking on this might become a waist of money if it even slightly catches on. I could see three or four people in a city hitting places up and eventually getting
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Of course, you were probably referring to the fact that each person's usage multiplied by the population of the country is a very big number. As a country, we are certainly using the resources quickly.
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Not in the UK...
Re:IF (Score:4, Informative)
We paid the disposal company $35 a month for rental of the grease dumpster. In return, they hauled the it away. We got nothing for the oil itself. That's just the way it is around here.
That said, earlier this year, we had a guy ask us if we'd fill his 2.5 gallon buckets with our leftover oil... and we said yes... for a while. Instead of just taking the bucket oil, flipping the lid on the dumpster open, quick pour and closing the lid, we had to spend 5 minutes prying lids off buckets, dumping a little here and a little there, resealing the buckets, etc. It went from a 60 second job to a 10 minute job so we stopped doing it. Figure 4.5 hours of pay a month wasted in messing around with his buckets at about $16/hr by the time you figure in taxes and other hidden fees with the wages and you're looking at it having a cost of $72 a month to fill up his buckets. To top it off, we'd supply him with oil faster than he could use it, which meant we had to keep that $35 dumpster around anyway. He refused to pay anything for the oil, stating that he was doing us a favor by getting rid of it...
I'd estimate that our one little restaurant probably went through... 6-7 gallons of oil per day. Having managed the sole (old, large style) McDonalds in a college town 10 years ago (ie, they probably had the highest oil usage of anyone in the area at the time), I'd guess on memory that we went through about 10 gallons a day there. There isn't enough used oil to fill up the cars of the employees every day, much less have any kind of impact on large scale use.
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I pay about 66 cents a gallon in taxes on my gasoline for one thing... if bulk vegetable oil starts getting taxed similarly, that alone will negate the price difference, not to mention that vegetable oil will still be supply limited. Restaurant vegetable oil use will be a drop in the bucket compared to how much demand w
Mr Fusion (Score:1, Informative)
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yeah, ya know where that falls apart? (Score:2)
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Surely you mean 1.21 Jigawatts?
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Back to the Future (Score:1)
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Dolorian [wikipedia.org] is Finnish dark metal band from Oulu. So they probably should be assessed by bpm (beats per minute).
The Delorean [wikipedia.org] or better De Lorean DMC-12 on the other hand might be better assessed by rpm. Cheers.
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Is there a way to... (Score:2, Funny)
Only in the USA (Score:4, Informative)
(by the way, they've been doing exactly this for years in other places, like Germany...)
Re:Only in the USA (Score:4, Interesting)
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Those taxes are supposedly to cover the costs of building and maintaining the roads those vehicles travel over and wear out. Here in the states gasoline for agricultural machinery is often available without that tax added since the machines burn it working in the fields and don't have a direct impact on the roads.
It seems to me that it would make more sense to put the tax not on the fuel used by motor vehicles but on the tires for them w
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I imagine one problem with that would be that tires last so long that the government couldn't quickly adjust the tax to account for changes in the cost of road maintenance. So, they'd end up increasing the taxes far more than necessary in order to compensate.
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and works only until restaurants begin selling their waste fats and oils to commercial recycling plants.
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Good point - the old British inspired fish and chips just requires topping up what ever oil evaporates or ends up in the food and scraping out the sludge every now and again.
Mythbusters (Score:5, Insightful)
As they observed on the show, the only reason it's such a cheap source of fuel is because it's a waste product now. If people start using it as fuel, it will cost just as much as Diesel fuel does.
Supply chain costs (Score:2)
Xix.
Re:Supply chain costs (Score:5, Informative)
If petroleum goes up in price a bunch more, biodiesel gets to break even.
The unmapped territory is that although it burns a hydrocarbon, 100% biodiesel
doesn't increase atmospheric CO2, because that CO2 was removed from the atmosphere
less than a year prior. It is cyclic in the short-term. Biodiesel could be a
near drop-in replacement for gasoline in cars and solve greenhouse gas
problems from automobiles. Of course, if you use peanuts instead of soybeans, and
oil costs stay high....people bet billions on shifts like this, the shift
to biodiesel would become reality if regular diesel wholesale prices get too
high and we have a strong need to minimize emissions...both of which are
very real scenarios. Both factors have shifted a lot since this white paper
in 2002.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/analysispaper/biodies
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Wow! Where do I sign up?
While I was about to write some more smartassery regarding what I assume is a mistakenly placed "gasoline" where you meant "diesel", I came across something odd in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel_in_Brazi l [wikipedia.org] - "Although Brazil is a major oil producer and now exports gasoline (19,000 m/day), it still must import oil because of internal demand for other oil byproducts, chiefly diesel fuel (which cannot be easily
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gasoline engines, and gasoline fuel...
In contemplating the greenhouse gas problem (or our budget deficit for energy), its quite a pickle. Cars burn predominantly gas. Gas requires oil - petroleum oil - for production. The USA doesn't make enough oil, so we necessarily send a LOT of US dollars to OPEC each year, and many OPEC members are openly antagonistic towards the USA.
Do we really want to give our enemies a lot of
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Either take out 'electric cars' or 'reasonable'. You could also replace 'electric cars' with 'ethanol'.
I'd venture a guess that production of ethanol is approximately similar to production of biodiesel, in terms of cost and energy usage. That's just a WAG, though.
Either way, I don't mind as long as I can continue to drive vehicles that are similar to what I like now.
Actually,
Sign up at the VW store (Score:2)
At the import car dealership. European passenger cars with diesel engines will become more widely available in North America now that petrodiesel dealers in the United States are switching to lower-sulfur blends.
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Sorry, that doesn't replace "gasoline in cars"; it replaces gasoline powered cars. Biodiesel isn't a drop-in replacement for gasoline; it's a drop-in replacement for dino-diesel. You could say that diesel cars are a drop-in replacement for gasoline cars, which is fine if you don't mind driving a little Volkswage
That's why biodiesel is not scalable (Score:2)
With *new* oil, you need to look at the costs, both financial and environmental, of
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If you are turning natural gas or oil into fertiliser (as we do with nearly all of it) to make oil
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The substitution of corn for "real sugar" is also why Mountain Dew no longer tastes like Mountain Dew and a lot of candy isn't as good as it used to be, either. It's also a little scary how many other food products have had
Sweet! (Score:2)
Ethanol from suger may not be deisel but it's another growable fuel, as well a
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I do know that I don't care for them all that much anymore (they were never my favorite, to be fair, but they used to be okay), but that may just be due to my rapidly approaching geezerhood.
Re:Mythbusters (Score:4, Informative)
Pay tax directly? (Score:2)
This sounds like the situation in Minnesota where they have die added to fuel that is sold for off-road purposes (e.g. farming equipment, construction equipment, generators, etc.). The gas-tax is incorporated into the price of on-road fuel and is used (in theory) to offset road construction costs. Since the off-road equipment doesn't use the roads, they don't have to pay the tax. T
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Vegetable oil is still a hydrocarbon fuel, and releases various gases and particles upon combustion. Furthermore, vegetable oil is no more a 'renewable' fuel than standard ff oil. They're also both waste products (though one could certainly use new veg-oil from the store).
The amount of bio diesel produced from one acre of corn is something like 300 gallons. To me, this implies a limited production if you consider the need to grow corn for food as well.
And given that traditional ff fuel can be
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If it becomes profitable to produce vegetable oil on a much larger scale, I guarantee you people will find ways of producing more with less. This
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There's one key fact you're forgetting: we can grow more! Not only is that what makes it "renewable" (as opposed to fossil fuels, which we can't make more of on a large scale short of waiting a hundred million years or so), but it also negates the last major unsolved problem* of those "various gases" because the new plants absorb
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I did read your entire post, and this statement -- that synthesizing traditional oil is just as easy as growing vegetable oil -- is what I'm objecting to! Synthesizing oil is much harder than growing it, and the amount of oil that would need to be grown is not impractically high. If you'd read my post, you would have understood that.
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The gases released by burning Vegetable oil are the same ones absorbed by the plant as it was growing. It's a natural process.
The reason fossil fuels are a problem is those gases were taken out of the environment millions of years ago over a period of millions of years and now they're all being dumped back over a century.
That problem does not exist for vegetable oil.
Re:Mythbusters (Score:5, Insightful)
Taxes (Score:2)
This is nothing new... (Score:5, Informative)
In fact my own car has been adapted to run on vegetable oil, (either used or fresh) I collect used oil and filter it in my back yard, down to 5 microns. My car runs just great on it, absolutely no difference in performance, and I'm sill getting the same mileage, around 45mpg (US) or 55mpg(UK). My car's exhaust smells a LOT nicer (sort of a popcorn, or hot oil 'flavor'), and vegetable oil is a cleaner burning fuel, so emissions are lower. And of course, it's carbon neutral
A friend of mine is doing the same, at his place of work, they have a canteen, and they're getting through more oil than he needs. the places that we're getting it from, are more than happy for us to take it away, because they have to pay to have it taken away, and we'll do it for free...
now that I've gone veggie, I won't be going back. The heat exchanger kit that is installed in my car can easily be taken out and fitted into my next car. It's a win win situation:
We're using a waste product that was grown locally
It's cheaper (as in free!)
We're not funding Big Oil, who are themselves supporting dodgy, corrupt, undemocratic and/or unstable regimes.
There are some strong economic, political and ethical reasons to run on vegetable oil. For me, it's a no-brainer :o)
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Link to english website: http://www.elsbett.com/us/about-us/introduction.h
Elsbett used to build complete motors, today they mostly sell conversion kits for diesel cars (the US homepage seems to be a bit outdated there).
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Here's a pretty cool bit about a biodiesel manufacturer making it out of local
Is this news? (Score:1)
During that tour the singer made a lot of noise about greasenotgas.com [greasenotgas.com], which has DIY directions on how to do this to your own car. Very noble and indie rock altruistic of them. I think they haven't even been shown on the O.C. yet.
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ttyl
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Sorry, you are confused. Biodiesel, commonly described as needing no modifications, is the fuel that could require replacing rubber seals with synthetic. Biodiesel
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Ah, right, I was confused. :) It's biodiesel that requires changing the seals, and the problem with vegetable oil is temperature. I also remember that mixing the vegetable oil with (bio)diesel solves the temperature problem.
The problem here that I see is that we are theoretically close enough to fuel cells and electric cars powered by them that it doesn't seem worthwhile to pursue biodiesel or other renewable/eco-friendly carbon variants. This creates a problem for adoption, why should I adopt a fuel th
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Besides losing the wow factor of running entirely on lightly processed garbage, that also has the problem of not being very effective. That's just dumping some oil into the existing fuel tank. In any decent quantity, and possibly even in small quantities, it has the same problems as running 100% SVO, but it just takes longe for the symptoms to manifest. That's all coming from an armchair quarterback, though; I've n
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ttyl
Why is always a cross country trip? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm only half joking about that. The people who advocate this stuff have the same program as the Verizon employees who can't understand the difference between 0.002 dollars and 0.002 cents. They just don't seem to grasp the orders of magnitude difference between the amount of corn oil this country produces vs the amount of crude oil it consumes.
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Because a cross country trip (like the one I took this summer [wellingtongrey.net]) is a damn good way to test it out over a long distance and a variety of terrains. Plus, it generates interest. What American doesn't love the idea of setting out on the open road?
-Grey
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Corn oil would be zero-sum (the plants fix carbon into their biomass, removing it from our atmosphere; burning the oil releases CO2 back into the atmosphere) except fo
Perpetual Motion ... with a side of fries (Score:2)
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What I'm more interested in is... (Score:3, Funny)
problems with used veg oil as a fuel (Score:2)
2: you have to clean your filter A LOT, lots of impurities in used oil
3: In most countries, you still have to pay tax on it as it's classed as fuel
4: If you want to start it in cold weather you have to heat the fuel pipes to ensure the veg oil isn't too thick to be used.
Very silly article (Score:3, Insightful)
- The current used vegetable oil was currently being thrown away, lubricating landfills I guess.
- But it's not, it's already going into special dumpsters, which I suspect get dumped into recycling systems that filter the oil and resell it for non-human consumption by mouth uses, such as candles, ointments, plastic feedstocks, greases, etc....
- there were a LOT of veg oil per person being used. But if you think about it, it's doubtful that you're using more than a cup of oil a day, which doesnt translate into a significant amount of energy. Most people use at least a gallon of gas a day-- offsetting that with a cup of veggie oil is not a big win.
- And let's not forget a good percentage of that oil is effectively consumed in the process of shipping, filtering, and re-refining the oil.
p. Perhaps it would be better overall to nip this "waste" in the bud, and we all cut back on our consumption of fried foods. Less waste and less "waist"-- a two-'ferPossible issues? (Score:2)
1.) I don't own a diesel vehicle (yet), and
2.) It was 1.9 F (-16.2 C) last night. The record low in Chicago is -22 F (-30 C). Does vegetable oil freeze?
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It doesn't freeze, but it gels at low temperature. If it has water in it, it could freeze, just like gasoline. But diesels in general can require some pre-planning on really cold days. Dino diesel can gel too, that's why we have winter diesel. And it's a good idea to have a block heater to warm up the engine before trying to start it. My truck currently has a broken block heater and last week I had t
this ain't news.... (Score:3, Informative)
i had some friends who were traveling across the country on tour, in a rock band. they had converted their diesel van (a 15 passenger ford, if memory serves) for around 1500 bucks. the conversion tank/filter/box took up all the cargo space in the van, so they had to tow a trailer in which to put their amps, instruments, etc. the mileage still came out in their favor.
i would not have believed it if i hadn't seen them pouring filthy used oil into the tank inside the van.
some things they shared:
american fast food is about the worst place to get used oil, as they use the shit out of the oil before tossing it. asian, and middle eastern restaurants were the best, cleanest oil they had seen so far.
they got better gas mileage on the greasel than on the diesel.
the van had a switch up front, with which to change the lines from the greasel to the diesel. apparently the veg oil doesn't burn hot enough, and it was bad news to leave the van overnight with the veg oil in the lines. so before shutting it down for the night, they'd switch back to diesel, and let it run for 10 minutes. then in the morning, they'd switch it back to veggie oil after it warmed up.
the box in the back of the van did three things: it was a tank, in which to store the oil as it was processed, it floated out the water from the oil, (a sort of inline spit valve, not unlike on many wood instruments) and it filtered out the particulates. burnt fries, crispy shrimp tails, etc.
the filter was at the front of the line, so it was basically a big thick sock (they got them at home depot, and had to change them about 1000 miles. it was designed for some other use, but someone figured out it's capability to clean oil, and put it in there) turned inside out. they had also bought some ordinary kitchen strainers, which fit over the hole in the tank, and would grab the huge particles before they made it to the filter. once the strainers clogged, they could lift them out and tap them on the ground to get the particles out. much easier than changing the sock like filter.
they usually would go and ask for oil, but sometimes would need to refill after a show, which could be 2 or 3 am, so they'd just go poach it. most places paid to have the stuff taken away, so wouldn't care if you got caught taking it, but would generally assume you're up to no good if you were behind their restaurant in the middle of the night acting shady.
with 4 guys in the band, they had a system down. some places kept the used oil in a 55 gallon drum. for this, one would scoop, one would prep the empty 5 gallon plastic tubs, one would lift the tubs into the van, and one would pour the oil into the tank.
sometimes the places had the oil just sitting in the tubs they came in. one would either nab the full 5 gallon tubs, and put them in the van to be poured later, while another put empties in their place.
the back of the van was messy/oily, but this was their first trip with the conversion, so were still dialing in their storage system/process. next time i see them, i predict the van'll be much cleaner. as clean as a touring rock band's van can be, anyway....
i live in denver. they live in l.a. they drove from their home, up to vancouver, canada, and then over to denver, when i saw them. so far, on that tour, when i saw them, they had put one tank of gas in the van, and not even used the entire tank. this even includes a few hours running on diesel, as the water trap had some issues, and they had to drive around portland looking for someone who could fix it.
i was totally impressed. i haven't driven in almost a year, but i was convinced that if/when i do buy my next car, it'll be a diesel.
if anyone's interested in the conversion, and able to get to l.a., let me know, and i can put you in touch with the guy who did theirs.
Good for recycling, but not a huge source of oil (Score:3, Informative)
However the problem is that there's not enough vegetable oil coming from restaurants to impact even slightly our national oil usage. So it is a cheap fuel source for a few people. That's all. What we really need is a way to create organic oils on a large scale from algae, plants, or some other way using only energy from the sun. If we could immediately replace all our fossil fuels with organic (as it carbon-neutral) oils, we could stop our carbon emissions completely, having an immediate, dramatic, and hopefully non-warming effect on our environment.
Old, old news in UKia (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:McDonalds new revenue stream (Score:5, Insightful)
Even if the waste oil is only 1% of petroleum usage, which is not all turned into diesel, if the US ramps up its resources to produce more vegetable-based fuel we'd be able to dramatically reduce the amount of petroleum going into vehicles. Most diesel vehicles in the US tend to be used in freight transport. Imagine smelling french fries or popcorn instead of the current diesel when you're behind a large truck that's belching smoke all over the place. I know what I'd prefer.
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Our infrastructure at this point is highly dependent on petroleum, and
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based biodiesel, which is very limited in scope, but a B100 biodiesel.
If you factor in the cost of emissions...B100 biodiesel has NO net emissions,
and petroleum based diesel has significant emissions costs....
Factor in the cost of emissions on environmental destruction at
$1/gallon of fuel and keep oil over $70/barrel,
and America has a new soybean based economy.
I don't think that is really gonna happen, but there
are not so unrealistic c
McDonald's Used Oil (was Re:McDonalds new revenue (Score:2)
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