Hey cmpd, you're absolutely right on the new versus used oil. His question was how does using new oil compare to using crude oil.

For the home-brew guys, the return on investment can be pretty significant.

If you figure in the cost of acquiring the used VO (transporting it, is it free or does the restaurant want something for it), plus the cost of methanol and catalyst (like lye), yeah, you're roughly (and I do mean roughly) around a buck a gallon for the finished product.

But like you also mentioned, don't forget the sunk cost into the equipment. If you're a real DIY'er, you can put together a system for a few hundred dollars. But a decent kit will run you around $3K or more, so you have to figure in the return on that.

I ran some numbers a while back for a $4k system, splitting the acquisition cost between four guys at $1k each. I used the price of dino-diesel at $4 per gallon and the cost of producing a bioD gallon at about $1.

For each guy to break even, each guy would have to produce about 325 gallons of BioD, and then after that it was gravy. If the price of dino diesel keeps going up, then that return is a little sooner.

I figure on a long-bed Superduty, that's about 10 fill-ups.

So if you can get a group together, AND have a decent, on-going supply of waste VO, it's very attractive.

TX