Car Owners Turn to Vegetable Oil For Fuel

With gas prices going higher and higher, some Americans are getting creative. A recent Associated Press article reported than more people are fueling their cars with vegetable oil from their favorite restaurants.

Every other week, Etta Kantor picks up a few buckets of used oil from her local Chinese restaurant to fuel her Volkswagen Jetta. When she gets home, she simply uses a colander and a bag filter to remove water and any food particles. Then she pours the oil into a 15-gallon tank that sits in the back of her Jetta, where a spare tire would usually be kept. With a touch of a button, located above the radio, Kantor can switch from diesel fuel to vegetable oil in seconds.

“Oh, I zip around town, go fast on highways. It’s not any different,” said Kantor.

Restaurants have to pay to get rid of their old vegetable oil and are happy to give it away for free.

Shawn Reilly, a co-owner of a restaurant, says it saves them $40-$60 a month not having to get garbage pick-up for it. Aaron Schlechter picks up 30-40 gallons twice a month from the restaurant for his 170-mile daily commute. He says, “The only way I can assuage my guilt by driving this awful distance is by driving something that isn’t consuming fossil fuels and has much more environmentally friendly emissions.”

Budding entrepreneurs stand ready to fill peoples’ tanks. In Massachusetts, a company called Greasecar buys it in bulk from a distributor and sells it to local customers for 90 cents a gallon. The company also sells conversion kits ($800), like the one in Kantor’s car, that allow diesel cars to run on the recycled oil. The kits only work on diesel engines. Greasecar has sold about 200 kits in the past year.

Says Greasecar founder Justin Carven, “Once you install it you save hundreds of dollars. The product usually pays for itself in the first year.”

Cars start and stop using diesel fuel. A separate fuel tank is installed to hold the vegetable oil. Once the car is running and the vegetable oil has heated up, it can be switched over to run on just the vegetable oil. The oil must be heated because it is thicker and tends to congeal in the cold weather, Carven explains.

Liquid Solar contracts with local restaurants in Ithaca, N.Y to collect their used vegetable oil and in Santa Rosa, Calif., a group of 50 people have formed a co-op to buy the oil in bulk from a local manufacturer and then filter it for their own use.

Although the Environmental Protection Agency approves of vegetable-based biodiesel, it hasn’t approved recycled oil for sale, because they can’t be certain of what’s in it, says Christine Sansevero, an environmental engineer with the EPA. “There could be metals or chemicals that, when burned, could create something you didn’t intend to burn. It could also be fine, but it’s an unknown.”

The most common form of biodiesel is a blend of 20% biodiesel from soy and 80% petroleum diesel (B20). Veggie car owners say biodiesel is more expensive and has more environmental problems. Pure biodiesel costs about $1 more per gallon than diesel, and B20 costs about 20 cents more per gallon than diesel.

The Healing Waters Band had a Greasecar conversion kit installed in its bus for a recent seven-week tour across the country. The band used a blended biodiesel mix to start and stop the engine, and vegetable oil for the rest. They left San Diego on a full tank of vegetable oil and then filled up again at a Chinese restaurant in Missouri before buying 500 gallons during a stop at Greasecar in Massachusetts.

“We spent $200 instead of the $1,200 it would otherwise cost us, and we probably could have done it all for free if we kept stopping at restaurants,” said Tony Thorpe, a bassist and vocalist for the band.