Travel and camp with NO FUEL COSTS

[cracker39]

Well, no fuel costs with a diesel engine after paying for a conversion kit. They aren't cheap, but in the long run, it would pay for itself if you do a lot of traveling.

There is an interesting TV program on the science channel, Invention Nation. Three guys travel around the country in a green bus and had been using biodiesel (made from vegetable type oils, not fossil fuel). They find and interview regular folks who have invented fuel saving devices or are building "green" houses.

On one show, they went to a farm where a man and his wife sell and install a system that allows the diesel vehicle to burn regular cooking oil. The system heats the cooking oil so that it will flow and burn in the diesel engine, but they still have to start up and shut down the engine burning regular diesel or biodiesel fuel, so it's a two tank system with switching valve. They can drive up to a restaurant, and collect used cooking oil, as long as it is fairly clean, and burn it in the bus as fuel. There's some controversy as to how well this works or how the engine holds up, but it does work. There are better single tank conversion systems sold in Germany.

There are a lot of sites with biodiesel info and how to use cooking oil. Here's one. http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_svo.html

Ths makes me want to trade my gas burner for a diesel and convert it to burn free fuel....Makes sense to me.

[Leon]

There has been so much interest in used cooking oil that in a lot of places it is no longer free. Some of the larger chains are collecting the oil to use in their own vehicles, so to drive up to McDonalds and order a big mac and 10 gallons of used oil - isn't as easy as it seems. The people making these conversions will tell you the oil is free and you can get it anywhere but it is getting harder to get. Most of these programs are several years old, before corporations started to see the benefit of using the oil themselves.

[JeremyL]

Back in Texas I've got an older F-250 diesel, and I've ran it on everything from homemade biodiesel to filtered waste oil. A couple years ago when fuel prices spiked up around 3.50 a gallon for diesel I was going to the local Atwoods store, buying 5 gallon jugs of cooking oil, and pouring it in the tanks right in the parking lot.

Making a biodiesel processor isn't that hard, nor is it hard to run on filtered waste oil. Once you get the basics down it's easy as pie. I built a three stage processor out of old water heater tanks. One tank to cook off any water, one tank to make the biodiesel, and the third I used to "wash" the fuel to get rid of any leftovers from the chemical reaction. Other than some fittings and piping I didn't have any money in the setup as I scavenged everything from junk.

[cracker39]

I was wondering if new cooking oil was cheaper than diesel fuel. Since you bought and used it, I guess it is.

[JeremyL]

I was wondering if new cooking oil was cheaper than diesel fuel. Since you bought and used it, I guess it is.

I think that'd mostly depend on the area you're in. I've noticed here that diesel is around 3.70 - 3.80 a gallon, but when I was browsing the local grocery store the other day gallons of cooking oil were even more.

At the time I was buying new oil I think I paid around 15 bucks for 5 gallons, which was cheaper at the time. Even now you can probably source good used oil in most places. Find your mom & pop chicken shack or corner Chinese joint, I bet they have plenty of used oil. Heck, I had people offer to pay me to take theirs back when I was dabbling in it.

That Invention Nation show was pretty darn cool. My only complaint is that I wish they would have covered more of that stuff in depth. Maybe if the show was an hour long or they only covered one or two things per episode.