Can diesels really run on "grease"?

The tv news showed a guy who runs his Mercedes diesel car on filtered waste
cooking oil from fast food establishments. He doesn't do any refining,
just filters the oil through a cloth into a barrel and pumps the stuff
directly into his car's fuel tank.

How does he get away with it? I see a couple of problems:

Won't this unorthodox corn oil fuel clog up or wear his injector pump and
injectors? He claims cooking oil is better for his car than Diesel #2.

He pays no fuel taxes. Is it legal to run a car on the road without paying
fuel taxes? If its okay, then couldn't you run your diesel car on home
heating oil without paying fuel taxes? Its been said that is a costly
violation if the authorities catch you doing it.

He's got an old car, but wouldn't you void warranty on a new model?

What about emissions? Do you have to prove a fuel meets emission standards
before you can burn it in a vehicle?

 

I work with a young guy who is generally pretty level-headed (an
engineer - I know - the two together seem to be contradictory) who is
setting up to process free used vegetable oil to make diesel fuel for
his personal vehicle use. What he is going to do is a bit more
complicated than simply filtering it out - he is setting up a chemical
process the end product of which is true diesel fuel. His costs are
supposed to net out to something like $0.55/gal, and he will supposedly
be doing local restaurants a favor by picking up their vegetable oil
with no money exchanged (saving them the cost of having a commercial
company pick it up for disposal).

It will be interesting to see if it ends up working out like he
anticipates. He is currently shopping around for a used-but-not-abused
diesel car from which to capitalize on his enginuity.

Bill Putney
(To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
address with the letter 'x')

 

Do a search on biodiesel...

Matt

 

[/QUOTE]
Could be, diesel fuel is a dirty burner.
In northern Canada there is a problem getting a cold diesel to start in
the winter using good diesel fuel. I expect cooking oil would make cold
weather starting worse.The emissions test for diesel is a simple visual check.
By 2007 diesel fuel is supposed to be cleaned up significantly.
For now there is no clean diesel engine.

 

Well, I'll admit here that in my youth 20 years ago I actually worked the
night shift at a McDonalds that generated quite a bit of that cooking oil.

But, I hope that engineer of yours knows what he's getting into. There
is a lot more crap in used cooking oil, at least from McDonalds, than
just food. We used to have an oil pump with a big-ass paper filter on it
and we would drain the fry oil into this big basin with a filter on the
bottom, and switch on the pump then use the hot oil to -wash down-
the inside of the fry vat. Complete with Comet scouring powder.
The hot oil would wash all the Comet and crap that was scraped off
the fry vat into the fry vat drain and from there into the basin, through
the paper filter, then through the oil pump and back into the fry vat.
Once the vat was clean the oil would be pumped into a bucket then
the grill scrapings would usually be added to it. Also, all the water and
scouring power and crap that was used to clean the grills would go
into those buckets too - we certainly didn't want to clog up our own
plumbing by dumping heavy amounts of grease down our sink drains.
Restaurant kitchens after all can be one of the more disgusting places
to work.

You probably can use a paper filter to get the particulates out of
the fry oil, but your still going to have all the bleach and other
chemicals that are in Comet in the oil. (or whatever else they
are using)

Ted

 

Could be, diesel fuel is a dirty burner.
In northern Canada there is a problem getting a cold diesel to start in
the winter using good diesel fuel. I expect cooking oil would make cold
weather starting worse.

Here that is illegal, but it's been done for years.

The emissions test for diesel is a simple visual check.
By 2007 diesel fuel is supposed to be cleaned up significantly.
For now there is no clean diesel engine.[/QUOTE]

You should be more careful with your attributions. I wrote none of the
above.

Matt

 

I asked him a little more about it today and mentioned some of the
things you said about bleach, etc. He said that there are several
purity checks used throughout the process of converting it, but that he
did not specifically know if the process properly handled such things
and if the purity checks would spot such contamination. But he said he
would check into it from the sources he is using to put his system and
process together - certainly the people who have been doing this with
comerical restaurant frying grease will have faced all the commonly used
contaminants.

He did say that one of the first chemical process steps results in
glycerine settling out to the bottom. If it's clean enough, that can be
used to make soap.

Bill Putney
(To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
address with the letter 'x')

 

Interesting.

Some companies and government fleets have been running biodiesel of varying
blends with actual diesel fuel for some time now. It'll burn, although
variations in the quality can be a headache (at least for us). So, for the
OP, no need to listen to USENET ignorance. Just search on biodiesel and be
done with it.

 

None, well you must have a virus then,

 

No, you just don't know how to use a newsreader...

Matt