As the saying goes, “nothing is free”, with our efforts in
running our vehicles on grease/waste vegetable oil (WVO) it’s simply cheaper
and less bad for the planet.
To all of the “nay-sayers” as to whether or not using grease/WVO
as a fuel source is damaging to your engine, we are not debating that. We have owned several vehicles over the
last six years that have run off of grease/WVO and have not had any problems
because of this system conversion.
With this post we simply hope to offer insight and information about the
process.
Our primary vehicle is a turbo diesel sedan (VW Passat); see
the post (click here) for how we filter our grease/WVO at home with a centrifuge setup. This system has worked great and saved
us thousands of dollars over the years.
We have spent four weeks in a diesel motor home with a grease car
conversion kit in it on a road trip to Alaska and back.
While on this road trip the grease/WVO was free, but there were
still costs involved in running the system.
-Rubber gloves and paper towels
-Bag filters to run the grease/WVO thru to catch larger
particulate before poring into the heated fuel tank
We collected about 600 gallons of free grease/WVO over the course
of our trip. It is important to
note that two things drastically affect your bottom line. 1- Grease/WVO quality and 2- fuel filter
choice.
On a trip like that, where you were trying to acquire 100
gallons of fuel at a time, your instinct says take as much of whatever you can
get. While that may seem like a
good idea at the time, ultimately it could be the demise of your fuel filters causing
them to clog and need to be replaced more often. We normally get our fuel filters from AutoZone, which are
both cheaper and last longer. On
this trip we were forced to get our fuel filters from Napa Auto Parts, which
did not last nearly as long and were
more expensive. We found
that using the Napa fuel filters in conjunction with the bag filters (rather
than a centrifuge) we were getting drastically fewer miles out of the fuel
filters.*
Simple numbers break down:
Cost of diesel fuel about $4.30/gal
The motor home we drove gets about 10mpg diesel or grease/WVO
If we had driven 7,000 miles on diesel fuel alone our cost
would have been about 43 cents per mile (total of $3,010).
Our actual end result in the motor home, with having to
change the Napa fuel filters more often, as well as running on diesel more
often because we didn’t have enough fuel filters with us, was about 20 cents
per mile (total $1400).
This process is not for the fast gas and go traveler. This process can be slow and arduous in
both collecting and filtering the grease/WVO. There has to be a deeper desire to either “save” the planet
or save money in your pocketbook. If you are considering using grease/WVO as a
fuel source for your diesel vehicle, go for it! You are sure to be and meet an eclectic group of people both
in your town and in your travels while hunting for fuel for your vehicle.
*The oil we collected was free of both water and fine
particulates and still it was clogging the filter much sooner than what would
be normal. We can only assume that
the micron of the Napa filter was significantly finer than the micron of the
bag filters allowing particulate to go thru and clog the fuel filter sooner. Even still, we had cut our fuel costs
in half from what it would have been to burn diesel for 6,000 miles.
