Collecting Used Vegetable Oil...

Many of you have asked me how I get the oil that I use to run my vehicles. Well, read on...

Now, keep in mind, you can't just pull up to any restaurant and take what you want. Most restaurants have contracts with renderers (oil collection companies) for exclusive rights to pick up the oil. That's why I avoid the chain restaurants (they are less likely to bend the rules) and focus on the independently-owned eateries (who tend to be friendlier and more interested in helping out the little guy... like me).

But, simply finding the mom and pop shops won't guarantee that you'll get your oil. With used veggie oil being such a commodity these days (what with it being used to make biodiesel, animal feeds, hair products, cosmetics, etc.), simply taking what you need without permission amounts to stealing, as most places have a bin (often provided by the renderer) outside near the trash dumpsters where they dump the oil and the renderer comes to collect it.

But, if you get permission, or make arrangements ahead of time to get the oil before it is dumped into the renderer's container, then you can have whatever the restaurant is willing to give you.

This photo series is from a recent collection visit to a country club in the Southeast (names have been withheld to protect the innocent.) :-)

Getting the oil from the dumpster to the fuel tank:

Obviously the process is easier if I collect the oil in the Land Rover because I can maneuver it closer to the container. But, sometimes I have to collect in BABS (which requires a lot more room).

To get the oil from the dumpster to the tank, I use a pump. Some people use buckets, but many dumpsters now have grates on them, and a bucket just won't fit through those little holes.

I have two types of pumps: one is an electrical pump (from an RV water system!) The other is what's called a "Barrel Pump" and is, essentially, a hand-cranked turbine. Obviously, the electrical pump is easier to use, but requires a power source... in this case, the Land Rover itself. I use the barrel pump when I have to collect oil in the motor home. There is plenty of power to run the electrical pump, but I can't get the motor home close enough to the dumpster, and the hoses simply won't reach.

To use the electrical pump, I connect the pump's electrical wiring to the Defender, connect one hose to the bladder tank in the Defender's bed and another hose to the siphon tube that goes into the oil dumpster. Then I just flick the switch and let it go. I can get up to 85 gallons in the bladder tank.

If I have to use the hand pump, I just pump directly into 5 gallon plastic containers and then dump them into the filter tank on the motor home. It's a lot messier, and definitely tiresome, but using the barrel pump is a lot faster than the electrical pump, so there is a trade-off.

And, whether I'm using the barrel pump or the electrical pump, I always cover the end of the siphon tube with a couple of layers of chiffon fabric. It's strong, lightweight, and the perfect mesh for keeping debris out of my oil.

It's a fairly simple process... I just pump the oil out of the restaurant's container and into mine. And, once I have the oil in the filter tank on my motor home, I turn on the tank heater, warm up the oil, then turn on the centrifuge to spin out the finer particles and the water. After an hour or two (depending how dirty the oil was to begin with), I have clean oil that I can use to run my engine. I transfer the newly cleaned oil into my clean veggie tank, and I'm on my way (well, after I clean up my mess, of course...)

Gettin' Greasy...

In the photos, you can see how dirty and sticky the used oil is. And, it gets everywhere. If you ever want to return to your source for more oil, you definitely have to keep your workspace clean. So, I lay down some cardboard (when I can find it) and always clean up any spills (no matter how small). The best products I've found for cleaning up a veggie oil mess is Clean-Rite's Purple Power and Scott's Shop Towels.

Let the Purple Power sit for a minute, and it will clean oil off of anything. And the Shop Towels are absorbent and tough enough not to fall apart even when wiping grease off of concrete. (And, when I'm done, I put the towels in a jar and use them as fire starters for when I'm camping! How's THAT for recycling?)

As I stated before, it's a messy job. So, if you're a neat freak... forget it. Get your gas at the gas station. But, if you don't mind getting dirty, and want to do your part to lower vehicle emissions... then get greasy!

Veggie oil versus other fuels...

Want to know how vegetable oil compares to other types of fuels?

Popular mechanics put a great chart up on their website relating the costs of various types of fuels that we can run in our vehicles... Gasoline, Diesel, biodiesel, ethanol, hydrogen, electricity, etc.

Well, I added a third: Used Vegetable Oil!

Click on the chart for a larger version

Land Rover Vegetable Oil Conversion

You paid HOW MUCH!? Why bother?

That's what some folks say when I tell them how much it cost to convert the Land Rover Defender to run on vegetable oil.

While most people (mechanics, environmentalists, and laymen alike) are simply thrilled to know that this kind of conversion exists and stand in awe of such an ingenious and beautifully designed engineering feat, there are a few who simply can't justify the cost with the return. And, I understand their concerns.

Now, I'll admit, this conversion was expensive. We removed the gasoline engine and stock transmission and replaced them with a diesel engine and a better transmission. That added a tremendous cost to an already expensive conversion.

So, if saving money is your goal, don't do what I did. You could do it yourself and spend as little as $200 converting a car that already has a diesel engine. But, we were after bigger game. We sacrificed some fuel economy and horsepower for reliability, torque, and automation (I didn't want to spend half my day scrounging and filtering nasty oil.)

So, I didn't gain much in fuel economy; The Defender's lack of pep will make you cry; Used oil is getting harder to find; And, that diesel engine is pretty noisy. So, with all these drawbacks, why on earth did I do this conversion?

Well, we actually had two different goals in mind: One - free fuel. And, Two - an earth-friendly fuel source.

Now, keep in mind that going "green" fits very well into my Vanishing America project. I can't, with good conscience, go around documenting a Vanishing America and be a carbon-belching contributor to it at the same time. So, the decision was largely an environmental choice. But, let's talk specifics...

Reason Number one: Free Fuel.
The free fuel issue does seem to be changing due to the fact that waste oil is becoming a commodity. However, at this stage, it's still attainable, and at $5 per gallon for diesel, it's rapidly paying off. As a matter of fact, I just got back from two round trips to Chattanooga, TN (a total of 500 miles solely on used veggie oil). That means, at a 15mpg average, I saved over $160 in fuel. Multiply that over the course of a 10,000 mile year (with diesel prices continuing to climb), and we're talking about a conservative potential savings of $3500/year. Not much compared to a $30,000 conversion, but it adds up over time. But, money wasn't the only reason for the conversion. Which brings me to...

Reason Number Two: Earth-friendly fuel source.
Petroleum-based fuels are bad for the environment. We all agree on that. And, they come from a limited resource. (It may take a hundred years or more before all the oil is gone, but eventually it will be gone.) Waste oil, on the other hand, is completely renewable. And, since it comes from restaurants, it has already been used once. That means we don't have to pump oil from wells, we don't have to use crops that reduce the food supply, and, most importantly, we don't have to burn other fuels to process this waste into something that can be reused. It's a beautiful, efficient system.

Now, what about the waste oil becoming more difficult to get. Well, that's definitely the case. Every day, I see evidence that the cycle is progressing. It began with restaurants paying to have the oil hauled away. When renderers realized they could profit from the oil, they began to pick it up for free. Now, with more competition, some renderers are actually paying the restaurants for the oil. This cycle was expected. But, the good news is that the engineers responsible for creating new biofuels have not been sitting idly by. They have come up with ways to get fuel from waste wood, plant waste, tree bark, and even algae. And their progress is phenomenal. I expect that right about the time that everyone has to pay for waste oil, these engineers will have perfected these new ways of obtaining fresh oil, effectively collapsing the bubble created by the demand for waste oil. And, that puts guys like me back in the driver's seat. And, I see all of this happening within 5 years.

So, yes, the conversion was very expensive. And, on the surface, seems like a waste of money. But, I'll save at least $3500/year on fuel, there are still literally tens of thousands of places all over the US who will give me free oil, and my consumption of this product actually has a positive effect on the environment. And, that, to me, is priceless.

Land Rover

Finally!

I have wheels!

(Well, I always had wheels in the form of BABs, my motor home, but now I can actually get around town without having to worry about where to park.)

The Land Rover is finished. It has taken almost four months, but it's done. And, it looks and runs great!

Shane Ballensky, owner and operator of Rover Hybrids in Redding, California, converted a 1994 Land Rover Defender 90 series from a gasoline V8 to a diesel 4 cylinder. Why? So I could run vegetable oil as fuel. Gasoline engines can't run vegetable oil, so we replaced the gas engine with a diesel and created a one-of-a-kind eco-friendly, good-lookin' expedition machine.

Now, some of you familiar with Land Rovers may say, "Hey, wait a minute...".

Yes, it's true... Land Rover did build a lot of diesel Defenders for other countries, but they're hard to find in the States. Also, the Land Rover diesel engines can't compare to the torque, horsepower, and reliability of the Cummins 4bt diesel engine that we put in. It was a lot of work, but well worth the effort.

And, if you're interested in the details, I'll be publishing an article about the conversion sometime in the next couple of months.

In the meantime, Shane will be finishing up the veggie conversion on the motor home, and if all goes well, I'll be back on the road by the first of the year!

Alternative Agriculture for Renewable Fuels

Vertical Farm Project
(image from www.verticalfarm.com)



It's true! It CAN be done!

I know I don't get more than a handful of readers, but for those of you who have read June 11th's post about bio-fuels, let me tell you... my prayers have been answered! In that post, I asked why so many people are complaining about the hardships that bio-fuels will put on agriculture, when all we have to do is build vertical greenhouses. Well, that's just what someone is doing...

The vertical greenhouse, designed by Dickson Despommier may just be the answer to all our agricultural problems (at the least it will shut up those people complaining about wasting agricultural resources on bio-fuels).

Mr. Despommier, as I just learned through an article in July 2007's issue of Popular Science (page 45), is in the process of designing and building hydroponic greenhouses that use vertical tiers of cropland with a small footprint instead of the traditional method of abusing acre upon acre of wilderness for farming.

It uses solar power, recycled water, hydroponics... Well, rather than try to describe his project myself, maybe you should take a look at his website:

www.verticalfarm.com.

It is a good looking, well designed, and very informative website on this wonderful idea. Just the thought that someone truly is working on this problem made my heart soar!

Vanishing America and Alternative Energy

Vanishing America

Project Details...

See America on 15¢ a day!

Well, in fuel costs, anyway. By using Vegetable Oil as my primary traveling fuel, I will, theoretically, be able to travel anywhere I want to on my journey without spending a dime on fuel. (In extremely cold weather, though, I will have to run on regular diesel, but for 95% of my trip, I can run vegetable oil or biodiesel.)

That's the plan, anyway. With the trend toward alternative fuels, running your car on either BioDiesel or SVO (straight vegetable oil), is gaining ground as an acceptable option. Even Prince Charles of England is converting his vehicles to BioDiesel, as this Washington Post article points out: (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/07/AR2006120701009.html).

And now it seems Arnold, the Governator, Schwarzenegger, is doing likewise, and encouraging Californians to join in the effort.

Not only does running on vegetable oil reduce emissions, it reduces our dependence on petroleum, a substance that is guaranteed to run out eventually. The earth only has so much oil stored beneath its surface. Once that's gone, it's gone. Then what?

Well, we use a renewable source: VEGETABLES!

Though not totally legal in any state yet (Vegetable oil as a fuel has yet to be approved by the EPA or the DOT), it IS being used successfully all around the United States and in many countries abroad. It's an easy step to go from diesel fuel to vegetable oil -- after all, the diesel engine was originally designed to run on peanut oil! Once you filter and de-water vegetable oil, and keep it at the correct temperature, you have the ideal fuel for your diesel engine. You can even use waste oil from restaraunts! Just filter and de-water it first. It's FREE! Check out the follwing article from Car and Driver Magazine: http://www.caranddriver.com/article.asp?section_id=4&article_id=7818&page_number=1

For my Vanishing America Project, I'll be driving all over the United States in a motor home converted to run on vegetable oil. (It will also run on regular diesel and biodiesel, but at up to $3.00 a gallon, I'll stick to veggie oil as much as I can.) I will also be towing a Land Rover diesel converted to veggie oil as my off-road vehicle -- all the power and torque of a regular diesel engine at none of the cost! Okay, sure, the conversion is not cheap. Now, you can do it yourself for as little as $50, or with kits you buy online for around $750, or you can go all out (like I am) and have a system custom built for you, but the bottom line is that you'll ultimately pay for the conversion in the first 200 miles of driving on veggie oil. And think of what you'll be doing for the environment!

It's an easy, affordable thing to do, and many people are following the trend. If you need proof, just look at all the conversion companies springing up all over the country: do an online search for "vegetable oil diesel", "veggie oil diesel", and see how many results pop up. It's inspiring. And, as we all know, it will likely take the government years to accept this alternative to oil (they do have to keep their oil corporations happy), but the move is on! BioDiesel is already approved by Federal agencies, so veggie oil can't be too far behind.

Keep your fingers crossed, buy an old diesel car and have it converted, or do whatever it is you do to lessen your impact on the environment. It doesn't take much. Just a little effort from a lot of people will make the difference.

Keep checking back with me during my journey. You're sure to see a lot of gorgeous pictures and read some interesting stories. See ya on the road!