Veggie Power

Megan and I have left Berkeley and started our holiday travels. We're driving to visit Charlotte and Scott in Denver, Colorado with our friend Dave Silver. We wrote about Dave way back in April when he appeared in a newspaper article about a truck he converted to run on vegetable oil. As I write this update we're cruising in that very same truck down highway 50 towards South Lake Tahoe at 60 mph--all under veggie oil power!

Dave's truck, a 6.9 liter diesel 1985 Ford F250 can run on diesel, biodiesel (filtered vegetable oil mixed with methanol/ethanol and lye) and vegetable oil. He gets 12 miles to the gallon regardless of which fuel is used. Dave usually gets his oil for free from fast food and family-style restaurants. Most restaurants have a grease bin behind their location where they store used oil until a company comes and picks it up.

We packed up his truck at around 10AM this morning and drove half an hour outside Berkeley to Vacaville where Megan spotted a strip mall Chinese food shop. We parked the truck and went in. Dave explained to the manager that he has a truck that runs on vegetable oil. He then asked if we could have their used oil. After a moment's pause the manager agreed and we went out back to begin the process.

The first step was pumping the used oil out of the grease trap. This particular restaurant used cottonseed oil that was a nice amber color. Some places Dave has visited don't change their oil very often and use low-quality oil (partially hydrogenated oil) that isn't as good for the truck's system. Using a hand pump with a filter screen on the bottom we filled 5-gallon jerry cans with the old oil.

Next, we used a 3-step filtration system that Dave engineered to filter out any remaining food particles. After 4 and 1/2 hours we pumped 90 gallons out of the grease pit and filtered 30 gallons for immediate use. We've put the other 60 gallons in jerry cans to be filtered later. Diesel at the pump sells for about $3 a gallon in California and we got 90 gallons of fuel for nothing--saving us $270.

We'll drive 180 miles and will spend the night with a friend of Dave's in South Lake Tahoe. Tomorrow we're heading towards Ely, Nevada and will probably camp overnight somewhere. We'll have to find more oil to pump on Thursday. Hopefully we'll have as much luck then finding a good restaurant as we did today.