Anyone see "Dirty Jobs" on Discovery? Talking about Biodiesel

Great show, as the host went to a local restaurant kitchen to help clean out the grease traps. But then they went a step further and followed this guy around that fueled all 3 of his cars on biodiesel. He claimed to get about 40 MPG, and the cost of the biodiesel was 55 cents/gal.

I'd like to see his calculation on the price/gal, as I'm betting it didn't include his time to pick up the grease and convert it (which he did in a contraption in his barn).

The host was a little too impressed with the magnetic stirrer the biodiesel guy had, however!

Reply to
Larry Bud
Loading thread data ...

Good point. As with fuel cells you have consider all of the costs before deciding it makes financial sense to use recovered cooking oil in a car.

Reply to
John S.

I bet the cost did not include the road use tax either. I don't know about where you live, but here in NC it is illegal to operate a vehicle on state roads if you have not paid the appropriate fuel taxes. The fines are substantial. I do wonder how the state will handle electric vehicles if they ever become popular. Special meters prehaps?

Ed

Reply to
C. E. White

A similar issue became a scandal in parts of the UK several years ago. The government discovered when doing emissions spot-checks that people were using nontaxed ersatz diesel fuels (one brand of cooking oil was especially popular) as part of their fuel mix. Says a lot about the tax rate that new cooking-quality oil was a lot cheaper than diesel fuel, I guess! Some fines and many bad puns about the "frying squad" and so forth resulted.

formatting link
As for cost effectiveness in the US, I suspect that the people who make their own biodiesel out of restaurant grease view it as a techno-hobby (kind of a sticky smelly one, but considering the cost savings...) and probably have figured out an efficient way to get the modest amount that an individual needs. It does strike me as the sort of endeavor that would have some economies of scale if done centrally, though.

Restaurants produce a prodigious amount of waste oil and greases (several thousand pounds a year on average, I'm told) and are not supposed to introduce such things into either the sewer system or the storm drain. Apparently at this point it is still quite possible to find individual restaurants that are happy enough to let you draw down the inexorably filling container out back where they put it.

However, the cleaner feedstocks are already a salveageable commodity that has some value, and an industry to collect the stuff exists where there is enough population density to make the logistics work out. This collection industry presumably would be both an infrastructure for supplying centralized biodiesel makers and an economic competitor against biodiesel.

--Joe

Reply to
Ad absurdum per aspera

This "collection industry" consists of a very unglamorous and therefore profitable business for a small number of individuals who are often very tough and ready to defend their monopoly. If any substantial number of people start going after the restaurant grease things are probably going to get unpleasant. Right now in most areas there are enough small fry to collect grease from but the big chains have contracts and "poachers" are likely to likely to run afoul of them.

Used restaurant grease is also truly revolting stuff as well.

If it were really economic the restaurant owners would be doing it, is my take on the whole thing. Either for vehicles or they would burn it in furnaces or gensets.

Reply to
Bret Ludwig

Yeah, the first time I ever saw a tanker truck with a non-euphemistic enough name to make me realize what they were doing, I was off fast food for a while.

There was an article about a grease poacher: "Meet Canada's least glamourous criminal" was how they described this way of making a dishonest living, skulking down alleys in the dead of night and wrestling steel drums of this awful offal into your truck. An official at the grease company being victimized guesstimated (the reporter didn't get the police to corroborate his statement) that as many as 10 people might be doing so in Toronto alone.

formatting link
Something tells me that if Val Kilmer is working up a sequel to "The Saint" this isn't going to be the plot.

--Joe

Reply to
Ad absurdum per aspera

Oh you are right, the guy said after intial investment the fuel worked out to 55 cents gallon. One step required 2 hours also. So I figured after watching that show, if I had no intial investment, I would only save, based on 10,000 mile per year (40 mpg):

For 250 gallons of regular diesel (at even $3/gallon): $750/year For 250 gallons of biofuelr diesel (at even $0.55/gallon): $138/year

All that time to save about 50 bucks a month? Geez... I would better spend time trying to curb our local school taxes going up 17+% a year. Or get second job that pays more, so I can keep my garage rather than giving up to a chemical factory. ;)

Now this is my calculations off the top of my head, so please help me be more correct if I am not.

tom

Reply to
The Real Tom

Good points, but the illegal issues, I think that stems from people using heating fuel oil to run diesel vehicles, not someone useing altenate fueled cars.

As for taxes on cars that use less or no heavily burdened taxed fuel, in Oregon, I am told they send you a bill based on your yearly odometer readings. Those who drive more pay more.

hth,

tom

Reply to
The Real Tom

The reason biodiesel is so cheap, right now, is that restaurants have to pay to otherwise dispose of it. If big reclamation chains are going to have any traction for their complaints about poaching, they will have to start paying for it.

Reply to
Richard Bell

I don't know how exactly that works out in practice - in Oregon when titling a vehicle, if you put down an odometer reading in excess of 99,999 miles on the title application form, they replace the reading with "odometer exceeded mechanical limits" or they simply put nothing at all. It is probably due to a bogosity in the computer system software, but effectively the state thinks that cars don't go past 100K miles. So there is no practical way of tracking odometer cheats.

I would assume that any grease-powered car in Oregon would be a home-built jobbie that quite obviously had more than 100K miles on it.

Ted

Reply to
Ted Mittelstaedt

MotorsForum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.