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Can a Car Really Run on Used Cooking Oil?

Can a car really run on used cooking oil? The short answer to that question is yes, although the long answer is a little more involved.

Everyone’s searching for a better fuel for our cars. Gasoline is expensive, not renewable, produces carbon emissions and keeps us tied to countries we’d rather not be beholden to. One possible answer is a fuel known as biodiesel. Biodiesel is a type of fuel that results when you run used cooking oil through a filter and then through a process called transesterification. The resulting fuel is a biodiesel that can be used in most diesel engines.

For the most part, you can’t just pour used cooking oil into your car’s gas tank and expect it to run. Standard internal combustion engines just can’t manage with that type of fuel. Diesel engines, on the other hand, can run on biodiesel without any additional changes. In addition, with a few conversions, a diesel engine can run off used cooking oil without having to process it into biodiesel.

Actually, the first diesel engines designed by Rudolf Diesel used peanut oil as their fuel source – they weren’t converted to a petroleum based diesel fuel until the 1920s, when gasoline and other petroleum products gained prominence in the automotive industry. In the 1970s, alternative fuels became a topic of conversation, particularly among those in the newly emerging environmental movement.

Used vegetable cooking oil can be found at a number of locations. While you can certainly use used cooking from your own home, you may not be able to produce used oil in sufficient quantities. A better source would be a restaurant, a commercial or industrial cafeteria or a food processing plant. While most businesses such as those listed above have contracts with waste management companies to dispose of their used oil, they’re usually amenable to entering into an agreement that will allow you to collect used cooking oil for use in your car. But all oils aren’t created equal – those in the environmental field consider the golden yellow used vegetable oil produced by Chinese restaurants to be especially valuable.

If you’re interested in converting your diesel automobile to run on used cooking oil, you’ll need to buy a conversion kit. The conversion kit allows you to establish a second fuel storage tank for the used vegetable oil, which must be heated before it can be used. The traditional diesel – or biodiesel – tank must remain. This fuel will be used to start the car and to flush the used vegetable oil out of the fuel line before the car is turned off. Technically, these conversion kits violate federal emissions laws – however, these laws aren’t usually strictly enforced.

Alternative fuel sources are definitely needed, and used cooking oil is one possibility. However, given the amount of resources used to produce the vegetables used to create cooking oil, it remains to be seen whether the use of used cooking oil – whether or not it’s processed into biodiesel – remains feasible. It is, at present, a nice way to recycle, but whether it would work on a large scale is yet to be determined.

What is Biodiesel?

Biodiesel is a form of diesel fuel made from vegetable oils, primarily corn oil and soy bean oil. Because the oils used are plant products, biodiesel is considered a natural and renewable fuel alternative. Currently, biodiesel is the only alternative fuel that’s been approved by the EPA. It burns clean and doesn’t contribute to either smog or global warming. It also doesn’t release cancer-causing compounds into the air like petroleum products can. But don’t think it’s a miracle cure to our nation’s fossil fuel addiction.

Biodiesel is more expensive than petroleum because of the manufacturing process used to produce it. An alcohol – methanol in most cases – has to be introduced into the vegetable oils to separate out the glycerine and methyl esters. The glycerine byproduct has many uses, including making soap, so producing biodiesel results in very little waste. However, large scale facilities for the production of biodiesel do not exist at present, so any cost analysis of biodiesel must include the cost of growing the necessary plant crops, processing them and shipping the fuel. However, any true cost analysis must also look not only at the financial costs of producing biodiesel fuel, but also at the environmental advantages that clean burning biodiesel offers.

Most people’s first introduction to biodiesel has been the “bootleg” form that’s produced by recycling used cooking oils, usually obtained from local restaurants by committed environmentalists. This home brew isn’t considered a legal form of biodiesel as there’s no way to monitor the production process to ensure the fuel meets quality standards.

One of the advantages of using biodiesel is that it can readily be used in most diesel engines without the need for any expensive or inconvenient modifications. Biodiesel actually helps clean diesel engines – you’ll actually need to change fuel filters frequently until all the petroleum sludge has been removed from the engine.

Biodiesel is currently available “neat,” or blended with petroleum fuel. B100 refers to 100 percent biodiesel fuel, while the most common mix is B20, a combination of 20 percent biodiesel by volume mixed with 80 percent petroleum by volume.

The National Biodiesel Board has run numerous tests on biodiesel to assess its performance, and after logging more than 50 million test miles – including street miles, off road miles and marine miles – the Board has found that biodiesel did as well as petroleum in all tested categories, including hauling, climbing, efficiency and power.

The feasibility of using biodiesel as the primary fuel source in any country is dependent on a number of factors. First, most consumer vehicles aren’t diesel, but run on gasoline instead. Second, there are the issues of mass production and distribution. These are considerable hurdles that would have to be overcome before biodiesel could be considered a wide scale, viable alternative.

However, in areas where processing plants are available, it may make sense to convert state or government diesel vehicles to biodiesel. In addition, as the US seeks to reduce its dependence on foreign oils, developing US-based biodiesel plants may become a more viable alternative.

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