Veggie Diesel?
 

I was reading in the Indianapolis Star about a company called Greasecar. After finding their website at greasecar.com I see it's a bunch of environmentalists that run used vegetable oil out of restaurants in their diesel vehicles. One person they profiled had a PSD F-350 (no mention of year - looks like a 95-98 range). Anyone here ever considered running biodiesel or even one of these waste veggie oil kits?
I'm hardly an environmentalist but one thing i am is C-H-E-A-P. If I can spend $1000 once to save $150 per month in buying diesel fuel (that is when I do finally get a PSD) then it's worth it to me....

Unless there's compelling reasons why you shouldn't do such a thing to the Navistar engine.

There are a few threads covering that in hear, do a search and you will find a more info. I know there is one guy in here who has changed over and is not haveing any problems so far. i myself am looking into it. I have found that the local McDonalds actually filters their used veg oil, to what degree i do not know yet. I am going to check on that tonight. I also have learned that it is mandatory for fast food joints to use veg oil, so finding it is easy. However there will be issues getting past the liability problems.

The site greasecar suggested using veg oil from Asian restaurants since they don't use hydrogenated oil. Don't know what diff that makes.

I can imagine McD's and others in that category would be concerned over liability (if someone can sue and win over coffee...) but I would imagine a smaller place would be more open to have you take away their oil.

There's been a couple posts about that already. I'm all for biodiesel, against soydiesel!! There's a difference: www.energy.cas.psu.edu/soydiesel.html
I've been running a 2% soy biodiesel blend in my truck, can't tell the difference from regular, which is good. I've studied soybean oil biodiesel and ran tests vs. regular #2 for my senior design project at school. The soy biodiesel is, IMO, far better than regular diesel, has higher lubricity to help extend engine life, burns cleaner, raises cetane number, and meets Tier I & Tier II emissions standards as well all the other requirements set forth by ASTM. I think it is the best alternative fuel right now, and if we can get subsidies from the government to make it cheaper, there'd be no question about it.
I'm not for burning veggie oil, just don't trust putting something like that thru my engine. As mentioned earlier, there is guy that's been running it for a while with no problems, and I'm interested to hear how it turns out.
There's also the legal issue. I don't think you can burn veggie oil legally, but wouldn't imagine it to be too big of a problem getting caught.
But for now, I'm going to stick with my soy biodiesel, help my truck, myself and other farmers out.

Farmboy:

There is a problem with your link. I'm realy interested in reading that paper though. I kn ow that biodiesel is good stuff, we used it at DelDOT when I worked there. Makes you hungry for popcorn though....

I saw a thread about that on the veggie oil forum. Right now the consensus there is since this particular veggie oil system runs in conjunction with the diesel fuel (and therefore taxed) then you (and a sharp lawyer) could claim it as a "fuel additive" - as far as I know there is no law on how much additive you can put in a tank of fuel. IANAL and YMMV. I agree Farmb0y - the sooner we can ban the chemical additives (like MTBE for petrol) and add soy to diesel or alky to petrol the better off we will all be. <soapbox>But this won't happen as long as a Texan is in the White House - not that someone from Taxachusetts is going to be any better</soapbox>

I saw that exact profile last week. VW TDI and PSDs are the two main direct injection vehicles that people have made the plunge and ran SVO(WVO) and verdict appears to be 'probably OK' in enviro circles. I checked back on this last week when a guy from this forum converted his over.

BD has been used for many years. Many corporate fleets have ran for a few years now. An example is OG&E (gas & electric Co.) here in Oklahoma. BD is here to stay in U.S.

Just remember the alternative fuel tax for legality. BD is approved as a fuel for diesels now. Good luck and keep us posted if you put a kit on. Oh, try ???Nuetrix??? (can't remember the name now) company out of Canada. At least a couple years ago, their kits was ~ $350 with inline electric heaters; no mess waiting to happen for hose-in-hose or rad lines. Do a Google search for them. I'll try to post if I find them again.

The site for Neoteric is www.biofuels.ca