Wisconsin company tries to make veggie oil mainstream
Filling the tank with used fry oil is gaining in popularity but still far from mainstream. Part of the reason is clearly the limited popularity and availability of diesel passenger cars in the US compared to many other markets. Actually getting and using veggie oil is also more hassle than just driving into your local gas station. You can usually get it from many restaurants for free, but it needs to be filtered and it doesn't work well in cold weather. A La Crosse, Wisconsin company called INOV8 wants to move veggie oil beyond cars to home applications like water heaters and furnaces. They have worked with Coulee Region Bio-fuels in Blair, WI to open a veggie oil recycling and filling station believed to be the first in the Midwest. They hope to use the facility to encourage more drivers to convert their cars to run on veggie oil and also heat their homes with it.[Source: Chicago Tribune via TreeHugger]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Mike Z 12:09PM (7/16/2007)
There are only a few hundred million gallons of used oil available, compared to 146 billion gallons of gasoline and 60 billion gallons of diesel consumed yearly.
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Jack S. 6:41PM (7/16/2007)
I'd say a big problem is if your car is not converted to run on vegetable oil then then you shouldn't be using it. You can't just dump vegetable straight into your tank and hope for the engine to last more than a few thousand miles. It must be properly converted so that the oil is heated to around 160F or more BEFORE it hits the injection pump.
Many hack solutions out there are insufficient (e.g. Lovecraft, aka Lovecrap) at doing this and only properly designed systems will give the proper longevity of the expensive bits of the motor.
Colder climates are less of an issue with VO since in a properly designed system it is heated anyway by engine coolant. For short trips it's a problem since the coolant may not get warm enough. Colder climates ARE a problem for biodiesel which generally is not heated and can gel with no way to correct other than dumping kerosene or some other additive in the tank to break it down.
Maybe autobloggreen could do a short series on debunking the misinformation surrounding biodiesel (e.g. you don't need to 'convert' to run on biodiesel) and VO (e.g. VO is NOT biodiesel) since there's a fair amount of inconsistency in the reporting.
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Bernie 2:46PM (8/30/2008)
Whatever dude. A Lovecraft system has been running my truck and my Benz for over 3 years and 100K miles. Yep, we're in California which is suitable for a single-tank system. So we run 50-50 in winter and SVO the rest of the year. Don't bash a system you've never run on. Though single-tank systems are not preferred in colder climates, the climate here in Cali is purrrfect for a single-tank sys. It's a Lovecraft filter in my truck that pulls a 38' 5th wheel wherever I choose. No probs here.