I have a friend whose car uses recycled
cooking oil as fuel

The idea of using discarded cooking oil
as fuel appeals to a lot of people. It reduces waste while
creating an alternative to petroleum based diesel fuel.
I have a friend whose car uses recycled cooking oil as fuel.
He is thinking of setting up a biodiesel fueled diesel
generator, and he could produce 15 kilowatts of power with it.
He figures that it will be enough for a house. I am not so
sure, I had a boat and it had a 15KW generator. when I
installed it I was sure it would be enough. It took me about 3
months to admit it should have been bigger. I think 25KW would
do it. I have seen this over and over. People don't realize how
much electricity they really use.
However there are a few problems with using cooking oil as
fuel. To use this cooking oil as fuel operators quickly learned
that unless they wanted excessive smoke and rough running
motors or gumming up the fuel lines, they had to run extra
filtration on the vehicle. They also discovered that running it
straight meant that they needed to heat the fuel.
In the cold weather there was starting problems because the
cooking oil thickens, this can be solved by starting using
diesel and switching fuel tanks after the engine is warmed up.
This is a bit of a pain in the ass so most people blend their
fuel at about 50% diesel and 50% waste cooking oil.
Greaseoil, or used vegetable derived, cooking oil as fuel
for diesel powered vehicles, and can be obtained virtually free
of charge from most restaurants. They have to pay to get
rid of it so welcome anyone who will take it away free.
The thing here is you must set up a schedule and keep to
it. They do not want to have to guess when you will come
around. They are counting on you to dispose of the stuff
in a timely manner, so if you don't do it they will tell you
not to bother coming back. It will only take one
overflowing container for them to decide that they should let
one of the big reduction companies handle the contract.
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