One answer to soaring gasoline prices: Driving on leftover grease

By Joel Featherstone

May 6, 2005 | The exhaust smells like french fries as Bob Basham drives his 1981 Volkswagen truck in search of a good restaurant to fuel up.

Basham, who is finishing up his bachelor's in aviation maintenance at Utah State University, runs his small diesel engine truck on used vegetable oil that he collects from local restaurants for free.

Angie's Restaurant on Main Street in Logan is the place he tries out on a sunny Monday afternoon. He had never fueled up there before, but gets permission from the manager. He said he prefers the afternoon when the sun is out and it is warmer because the vegetable oil is thinner and easier to extract from the recycling bin.

Basham's system works through a separate external fuel tank located on the bed of his truck. He dips a plastic hose, about the width of a garden hose, inside the bin of used vegetable oil and a small pump, powered through the battery, siphons the oil into the tank. Two filters clean out the oil before it reaches the tank. One of the filters is small and can be quickly cleaned out each use.

At Angie's, the fuel pumps slowly; Basham estimated 1 gallon per minute. However, he plans on purchasing a new pump, which would give him 10 gallons per minute with any oil.

The truck has been an ongoing project, he said, and he keeps on tinkering and improving the system. As an aviation maintenance major and experience working on old Volkswagens, he said he is used to fixing things.

"Pretty much everyday of my life, all day, is consumed with some sort of fixing something or building something," he said.

The system he uses was built by scratch and he purchased most of the products around Cache Valley in hardware and auto parts stores with a couple items over the Internet.

Driving with the vegetable oil works by first starting the vehicle out running diesel fuel. Then, when the oil is warmed by coils inside the tank by radiator fluid and the viscosity (thickness) is right, the fuel lines are switched. The vehicle can then run on pure recycled vegetable oil. Before the car is turned off, the line is switched by to diesel for a couple minutes to flush the engine out. When it is warm, Basham can almost immediately switch the lines, but, he said, when it is colder it takes at least a few minutes to warm up to the oil to the right temperature.

"This is just kind of a fun project for me and an economics project and an environmental type of project," he said. "It's pretty cool to bring it all together."

Pretty cool considering the gasoline prices on the rise.

As of Monday, the State of Utah's average price for regular gasoline was $2.30 according to fuelgaugereport.com, a Web site run by AAA, which is updated each business day. Last year, the price of regular was at $1.94. That's a 36-cent jump.

Basham said pure unrecycled vegetable oil can be purchased for about $2.50 a gallon at a wholesale distributer, a price in that gasoline could easily surpass in the near future. In fact, California already has with an average price of regular gasoline at more than $2.60, according to AAA.

With these prices and controversy over the use of fossil fuels, the used vegetable oil fuel system is becoming popular around the nation as an alternative fuel source. Greasecar.com is a Web site that caters to the community by offering services and information, hosting a forum and selling conversion kits online. On the main page it touts, "Vegetable oil as fuel is a cleaner, safer and less expensive alternative to petroleum based fuel. It can be locally produced, even grown in your own back yard!"

On the site there are about 70 "Greascar" profiles featuring pictures and descriptions of the vehicles. The only thing they have in common is the diesel engine and the conversion kit. (The system only works in diesel engines.) Other than that, the vehicles range from Mercedes, Volkswagens, school buses, RVs, huge trucks and even a tractor. The site sells its "Deluxe Greasecar Conversion Kit" for $795 online.

Greasel.com, a site with similar information sells a car conversion kit for $680. Both sites claim the do-it-yourself kits are simple to put together.

Another waste vegetable oil system Web site, fattywagons.com, gives some of the history of the diesel engine. Rudolf Dies, the inventor of the diesel engine, made the engines originally to be able to run on peanut oil and vegetable, and the fuel he believed would become as important as petroleum, according to the site.

Basham has been helping his friend Jake Gibson set up his 1982 diesel engine Volkswagen Rabbit with the vegetable oil system. Gibson, a senior at USU, said the Rabbit is his first car and he never considered owning one until he met Basham.

"I've always been interested in sustainability," Gibson said, who was also at Angie's fueling up. "When I heard the idea, I thought it was pretty nifty."

He said he was a little nervous at first, because of his inexperience with engines. "I didn't know anything about engines. I read how people did it and they said it was so simple, but it was all over my head. And then I met Bob [Basham]."

Gibson said since he started running the Rabbit with vegetable oil, the car actually seems to run smoother.

"It runs happier on grease. Just as soon as you flip it over it gets a little quieter, a little more power and the whole thing just seems to be running better," he said.

Gibson has been experimenting with biodiesel, a fuel which can run on an unmodified diesel engine. This fuel can be brewed from waste oil and is somewhat time consuming. He said he mixed a batch at home using a blender for about 20 minutes.

According to Biodiesel.org, a Web site hosted by the National Biodiesel Board, biodiesel "is produced by a chemical process which removes the glycerin from the oil."

There is more than one way to brew the biodiesel. At journeytoforever.org, it gives some biodiesel recipes and some different techniques.

Basham said the idea with biodiesel is to make a small amount and run it only as a startup oil, like he does with diesel now. He said he can run his car waste vegetable oil about 96 percent of the time. And, with driving about 10-12,000 miles a year, he said, he would only need about only eight gallons of biodiesel a year for the remaining 4 percent to stop and start.

"To be completely off of petroleum fuel," he said. "That would be ideal."

Although, Basham and Gibson are making their own biodiesel, it can be purchased easily online at a site such as www.buybiodiesel.com, which sells the fuel in a 5-gallon container for $39.95.

Careen Stoll, a graduate student majoring in ceramics, runs a Ford-250 diesel truck on the vegetable fuel system. She said although putting it together at the beginning was messy and painful, she has now configured her system to work "beautifully."

Stoll is currently on her way across the country from Logan to Virginia with her truck. She predicted she will need to stop at seven to eight restaurants on the way to fuel up ­ all for free.

"Free fuel is primo when it comes to the increase in gas prices," she said.

She said she became interested in the system for a few reasons including personal finance, but primarily for environmental reasons. She said she is tired of the country's dependence on non-renewable sources and it is time to do something different.

"We need to have a revolution about energy and it has to happen now," she said.

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