WVO, Waste Vegetable Oil Fuel

Waste vegetable oil as fuel was brought to my attention in a recent magazine article where a movie star talked about his diesel Mercedes that was converted to run off of used vegetable grease.

A bit of Yahoo!'n around (the alternative to Google'n) found these sites

Smarter Fuel , is a fuel delivery as well as a WVO installation group.

Grease Car , is a company that will sell conversion kits for your diesel car. The system will not work on non-diesel systems. They site is quite comprehensive and contains: fueling & filtering, a forum, resources, and everything else you'll need to get started. The company was born out of the initial findings from "Better World Workshop" and soon was developing it's own tractor conversions. The secret to making this all work was the pre-heating of the vegetable oil to help it speed through the system.

The Big Green Bus" from Dartmouth engineering.

The voice news" talks about powering a call with vegetable oil.


So, from what I gather, to make this all work, you need to find a local consumer of vegetable oil and try and get their waste from them. Then you take it home to your own filtration system, filter it, then fill your tank. So, before you run out to convert your diesel car to WVO (Waste Vegetable Oil) make sure that you have a stead source of the stuff. Some area's might have a local filling station or company that you can fill up at. Also, just because you have a bunch of fast food places around that they will just give you the stuff. Many of these fast food chains have deals already for the disposal of their waste grease. We have also read mixed reviews of doing the conversion yourself, especially if you're not a mechanic. You might be better served if you just find an expert or mechanic in your neighborhood.

Locally here in Oakland, our bus company, AC Transit is working with Chevron to test out bio fules, but that's for a different article. To read more, check out Exploring Cleaner Fuels.