Vegetable Oil

Vegatible oils have a large amount of free fatty acids and other components that need to be removed before use as a fuel. You might do a web search for BIODIESEL as there are sevral good articles that tellyou how to process vegatibel oils into biodiesel. An attempt to use untreated oil will lead to a quick failure of your fuel injection system.

RJD

Actually by law all diesel in the UK has to be 5% bio and this is causing problems in smaller filling stations that don't sell a lot of the stuff as it's bio organisms grow in the warm tanks and if there is water present they grow faster.

Soon UK diesel will have to be 10% bio and then...............

However it's tax free if you make it yourself - go buy Car Mechanics magazine - there is an ad in that this month for a self contained unit that does it for you. 2 months ago they ran an article on this subject. Back numbers are available.

Hugh

It worked fine on my 90 vw golf.

I can't imagine that the BMW diesel is any different than anybody elses diesel. You are asking about a technology that has been around for several years. You can get your oil from the local McDonalds or equivelent. All you need is a scrubber to pick the french fries out.

McD has to pay somebody to haul the old oil off, if you offer to take it off their hands for free, they'd like the proposition. If you offered $0.10 per gallon to buy the crap from them, they'd like that even more.

There was a television news article to that effect here in New York City last summer. Seems a guy in Connecticut was doing just that and running it through his Mercedes Benz. (It was an older one, probably a mid 80's if I had to guess.)

He collected oil from fast food stations, filtered it and ran his car on it.

Jono, If it works, let us know. Myabe my nexg car will be an diesel... Cheers Squat

This works for a while, but it causes a lot of premature engine wear because the combustion products are very strongly acidic and there's also water in there.

There is some pre-processing and pH buffering that can be done which will make it a much safer and more reliable fuel.

Problem is that folks used to pay someone to dispose of used fryer oil, now they are getting money for it. With the increasing number of processing facilities out there, it will soon cost as much as diesel fuel.

Of course you could use fresh vegetable oil... but around here, even low grade olive oil (not cold pressed) is more than twenty times as expensive as diesel. It would make your car smell great, though. Even better you could use the truffle-infused Nunez de Prado....

--scott

Thanks all