The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency also frowns on grease-cars

Tag : grease
Knop doesn’t burn gas. His 1985 Mercedes 300SD runs on wastevegetable oil. He gets his fuel free from several local restaurantsafter they’ve run it through the fryer a few times.
Driven to help the environment, or their own pocketbooks, manyAtlantans are seeking alternatives to the gasoline habit. The mostadventurous, like Knop, re-trofit their diesel engines to run onwaste oil from restaurants, picking up free fuel while theirfriends wait hours in line and pay through the nose.
Collecting old oil, filtering out the residue, tinkering with balkydiesel engines, keeping a greasy reservoir in the garage —-not long ago, these eccentricities pegged vegetable-oil drivers asmerely peculiar.
Now they’re beginning to look very clever.
Knop made the switch back in 2005, after Hurricane Katrina createdshortages similar to those metro Atlanta experienced last week.
“It got me thinking that if our supply is that tight, thatone storm could disrupt the entire Southeast like that, Idon’t want to be part of it,” said Knop, 36, acommercial insurance broker.
“I’m just going to remove myself from thatdependency.”
Though vegetable oil does have a lower carbon footprint, its cleanaspect didn’t motivate Knop. “It’s not asave-the-world thing,” Knop said. “It’s a save-mething.”
Knop said a lot of people made fun of him in the beginning but noware asking a lot more about it.
“My answer is, ‘Trust me, you’re not smart enoughto do it.’ “
Perhaps not. Driving on vegetable oil has its drawbacks, as GregMelville discovered when he took a cross-country trip documented inhis new book, “Greasy Rider.” Mysterious smoke pouredout from under the hood and the need to scrounge oil at everyopportunity made the trip challenging.
Those difficulties aside, Melville is smiling a lot these days ashe drives his 1985 Mercedes past the pumps. He’s a recenttransplant to Asheville, N.C., where gas is in similar shortsupply.
“A small, petty man who drives a grease-powered car would besmug right now,” he wrote on his blog. “Yes that small,petty man happens to look a lot like me.”
Melville will motor his grease-mobile to Atlanta on Oct. 7 for anappearance at Wordsmiths Books in Decatur.
Perhaps vegetable oil is a stopgap solution, a small way to gogreen, he said. But he insists that if “two goobers”like himself and his friend, Iggy, can make it across the countrywithout stopping at a pump, then “surely the many, manysmarter people who are working on solutions” can come up withbetter answers.
‘Voodoo’ engineering?
For Padrick Handley, that answer may be biodiesel, but itwon’t be vegetable oil.
He tried retrofitting his 2005 Dodge Ram 2500 to burn waste oil,but after three days on the road, one of his injectors clogged anddestroyed his engine. The cost? About $10,000.
“It sounded good to me, but at this point in my life,it’s not worth it,” said the Chamblee/Doravilleresident. “The vehicle was never designed for that as a fuel,and even with that as a second system, it’s stillvoodoo.”
There are few statistics on drivers of waste vegetable oilvehicles, but Jeremie Spitzer, general manager of Holyoke,Mass.-based Greasecar, which sells conversion kits for diesel cars,estimates there are probably 10,000 to 15,000 grease-mobiles inthis country.
Most manufacturers will void a vehicle’s warranty if theowner uses vegetable oil as a fuel, despite the fact that in 1893Rudolf Diesel ran his newly invented engine on peanut oil.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency also frowns ongrease-cars. Though the exhaust has a sweet, french-fry smell, itcan contain toxic fumes. Waste oil is considered an unregisteredfuel, subject to fines, which Calif. Gov. Arnold Schwarzeneggerdiscovered when he turned his Hummer into a canola cruiser.
Fuel for thought
These and other concerns prompted former veggie-oil driver Rob DelBueno to begin brewing his own biodiesel, a product created byusing methanol to chemically alter vegetable oil. Del Bueno soonlearned that home-brewing fuel also was illegal, for a variety ofreasons, and he went through the complex, and expensive, process ofgoing legit.
Eventually, he joined the National Biodiesel Board, had his fuelcertified and began selling it from a station on Arizona Avenue,near Kirkwood.
After running into difficulty expanding, he joined up with theSouthern Alliance for Clean Energy, partnered with EmoryUniversity, Ted’s Montana Grill and others.
He now sells about 250,000 gallons a year, with plans to expand inIllinois and Tennessee.
That’s a drop in the 500 million-gallon biodiesel bucket, butit’s 250,000 gallons of clean fuel replacing a dirtieralternative.
Even more vehicles run on ethanol, a corn-based alcohol, which nowsells in the billions of gallons. Mounting demand for soybeans andcorn, the rapid rise of food prices around the world, andbiofuel’s role in that process have all complicated theissues.
“Are we shooting ourselves in the foot here?” Del Buenowondered. “This is not a simple matter, it’s allinterrelated.”
In the meantime, engaging spokespeople continue to say grease isthe word, by embarking on cross-country trips in alternativelypowered vehicles. Atlantans Nik Bristow and Brian Pierce justcompleted a “Cannonball Run”-style 38-hour trip fromNew York to L.A. on biodiesel. Musicians such as Maroon 5, DaveMatthews and Counting Crows tour in biodiesel buses; Blue TurtleSeduction’s bus runs on straight vegetable oil.
Public awareness is good, said Melville, but “in the longterm, the solution is creating more fuel-efficient cars, andcombining that with biofuels that are not competing with food, likecellulosic ethanol.”
Or, suggests Knop, bike more, drive less, and use a waste productfor your fuel. It may be short term, but it feels good.
“When I have to drive, I drive a grease car,” he said.