Now Diesel owners mixing 50/50 oil/diesel with no conversion.

by Blair Goldstein

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June 24, 2005

It's a simple recipe: Mix 10 gallons of vegetable oil with 10 gallons of diesel fuel.

Bobby Tabor has been feeding the unusual mixture to his 1987 cream-colored Mercedes Benz for almost a week. It fuels his car on the 60-mile commute between his home in Appomattox and his car technician job at MB Euro Service on Boonsboro Road in Lynchburg.

There's just one problem, though - the smell.

"I don't notice any difference in the power or performance of the car," Tabor said. "You do get an odor out of the tailpipe, and it smells just like it does outside of a McDonald's. It's that charcoaled grill odor."

Mark Barker, owner of MB Euro Service, said he didn't know about Bob's experiment when he pulled into work Monday, but he smelled the change.

"When Bobby comes to work we all get hungry," Barker said. "We have to make a breakfast run."

Tabor said he has been talking to his brother, who works in the heating and air conditioning business, for almost five years about powering a car with vegetable oil. About three weeks ago, they started their experiment.

They get used vegetable oil for free from friends working at local restaurants. Tabor said the free oil is the only way it is economical for him to use vegetable oil in his car.

"You're looking at spending $20 to $25 a week (on fuel) instead of $40 to $45," Tabor said. "You put $20 in your pocket."

Vegetable oil can only be used as fuel in some diesel engines. However, Tabor said he did not have to modify his car at all. In fact, Tabor said his car would run on pure vegetable oil, as long as the temperature of the liquid remains above 160 degrees. The high temperature keeps the liquid thin and ensures that the oil will not congeal. Tabor said he keeps his fuel thin by diluting the vegetable oil with diesel fuel.

While it is unusual for a car to be driving the highway on vegetable oil, it is part of a growing product line of biofuels. Biofuels are fuels made from recently living organisms such as potatoes, sugar cane and wheat. In an effort to encourage the production of alternative fuels, Congress is considering a bill that would extend tax incentives for the production of biodiesel, a fuel made largely from soybeans. The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality estimates that there are about 15 biodiesel suppliers in the state that serve the more than 500 commercial fleets nationwide that use biodiesel.

Environmental and economic concerns top the reasons people are turning to biofuel. While Tabor said he thinks about both, his curiosity is the primary reason he experiments with vegetable oil.

"The car that I'm driving has 451,000 miles on it," Tabor said. "It probably rides better than some of the other cars on the road."

Reply to
NerdRevenge
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Question. Raw oil form the frier would be rather dirty wouldnt it? Do you have to set up a filertation system at your house to filter the oil form one drum to another? What kind of filter is used? If you dont filter it at home.. what does it do to the filter in the car? Does the cooking oil burn any cleaner then Diesel? or is it just cheaper then Diesel from the fuel station?

Reply to
Trey

It comes as a surprise to many that Dr. Diesel did not start out to invent an engine to run on Diesel fuel, but run more efficiently on gasoline. After he and several co-workers were injured in a gasoline explosion in his lab, he switched to vegetable oil.

The Diesel engine was commercially introduced at the Paris World's Fair in 1900, running on pure peanut oil.

As long as you have a supply of used oil you're in the conservation business. When you run out of discarded oil, it will cost you about

2,500 BTU's in petroleum fuels to grow and distribute 1,000 BTU's in vegetable fuels.

There's nothing new under the sun. We didn't drill our first oil well until we ran out of whales!

Rick

NerdRevenge wrote:

Reply to
Yofuri

Of course you would have to initally filter to dirty oil. Diesel engines have large fuel filters as diesel can be dirty.

Don't know if it is cleaner.

>
Reply to
NerdRevenge

Actually the reason it went to Diesel fuel it because the next year in 1901 the first major reserve of oil in the US was discovered in Texas. Pumping oil out of the ground is easier and cheaper than whale hunting.

But now the cost of petrolium is getting too high. There are so many enviornmental issues against the industry. I am sure if they converted over to converting veggies into oil the overall cost would be cheaper. I toss used cooking oil out in a wooded area near my house. The vegetation has never died because of cooking oil. Do that with petrolium and everything it touches dies in that spot for months.

Reply to
NerdRevenge

Rick, Your history is a bit off. Actually Diesel was employed by the Krupp family to develope an engine to run on coal dust. This of course was a failure and he was fired, but the diesel engine was born from that effort. The Krupp family was heavily invested in coal at the time. Steve

Reply to
Steve Lusardi

Rudolf Diesel was born in Paris in 1858. His parents were Bavarian immigrants. Rudolf Diesel was educated at Munich Polytechnic. After graduation he was employed as a refrigerator engineer. However, he true love lay in engine design. Rudolf Diesel designed many heat engines, including a solar-powered air engine. In 1893, he published a paper describing an engine with combustion within a cylinder, the internal combustion engine. In 1894, he filed for a patent for his new invention, dubbed the diesel engine. Rudolf Diesel was almost killed by his engine when it exploded. However, his engine was the first that proved that fuel could be ignited without a spark. He operated his first successful engine in 1897.

In 1898, Rudolf Diesel was granted patent #608,845 for an "internal combustion engine" the Diesel engine.

The diesel engines of today are refined and improved versions of Rudolf Diesel's original concept. They are often used in submarines, ships, locomotives, and large trucks and in electric generating plants.

Though best known for his invention of the pressure-ignited heat engine that bears his name, Rudolf Diesel was also a well-respected thermal engineer and a social theorist. Rudolf Diesel's inventions have three points in common: They relate to heat transference by natural physical processes or laws; they involve markedly creative mechanical design; and they were initially motivated by the inventor's concept of sociological needs. Rudolf Diesel originally conceived the diesel engine to enable independent craftsmen and artisans to compete with large industry.

At Augsburg, on August 10, 1893, Rudolf Diesel's prime model, a single

10-foot iron cylinder with a flywheel at its base, ran on its own power for the first time. Rudolf Diesel spent two more years making improvements and in 1896 demonstrated another model with the theoretical efficiency of 75 percent, in contrast to the ten percent efficiency of the steam engine. By 1898, Rudolf Diesel was a millionaire. His engines were used to power pipelines, electric and water plants, automobiles and trucks, and marine craft, and soon after were used in mines, oil fields, factories, and transoceanic shipping.

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Reply to
Mike

Where did you get those figures?

Peter

Reply to
Peter

I'd be interested in these numbers as well. Clay

Reply to
Badger

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