Mon 28 Aug 2006
We’ve been on a mission to collect as much grease as possible lately. We now have two regular sources, a local breakfast restaurant and a bar & grill. Still not a lot of grease though. We’ve tried talking to several restaurant managers and are finding that many of the larger places have collection companies contracted to take their grease. Many companies have started paying people for it, and are turning it into bio-diesel. The bio-fuel craze is here!
I went on my first collection run this weekend with Andy. The bio-brothers have quite the filtration set up! We use a long tube connected to a pump and 3 filters to suck the grease out of the bin, through the filters, and into a collection container. Then it’s all ready to put in the tank. We got a big bin to collect filtered grease in the garage, so we’re slowly building up a stockpile. I’m hoping to have enough to make it down to McCall to visit my parents this weekend. The bus needs a good bath before then, too…
August 30th, 2006 at 7:55 pm
you say it’s not enough. so how much grease do you need/consume in, say, a week?
so in the winter/colder months you would have to keep the grease from solidifying? it has to be in a liquid state to us it i assume
M
August 30th, 2006 at 11:23 pm
Thanks for the comments/questions!
We actually aren’t using much grease at all right now, but we have a large storage tank that we’re hoping to fill up. The tank is about 15 gallons and we get about 30 MPG. I am worried about not having enough for a 400-mile trip this weekend, but we just got another source so we should be ok. Hopefully we can make it on 1 tank of grease, but we can always use diesel if not. Since we don’t drive much in town we might only use a couple gallons a week, but we’re trying to accumulate quite a bit because this is definitely a road trip mobile, and we’ve got several weekend trips coming up.
We may have to use more insulation in winter, but the kit is designed to work in all weather. The oil does need to be liquid to use. This is actually why there is a second tank, because we have to start up on diesel (or bio-diesel) and warm up the car for about 5 minutes. There is a heater in the veggie fuel tank and fuel pump that runs off of the car’s cooling system, so as the car runs the veggie oil warms up. All the lines are insulated as well, so by the time we switch from diesel to veg oil it’s heated and liquid.
For collecting we try to collect right after restaurants clean their fryers, and wait about an hour so the oil is hot enough to be liquid but not too hot. In our big storage tank, we use a small tank heater that submerges into it to heat up the oil if we need to filter it or put it in the car’s tank.
Hopefully I’ll be doing more of the hands-on filtering and collecting grease stuff soon, right now I’m mostly watching & learning from my boyfriend since he’s done a lot more research and understands how it all works.
Grease for peace!
August 31st, 2006 at 6:55 pm
i shee
M
September 5th, 2006 at 11:16 am
remember, even if your fuel tank in the vehicle doesn’t hold enough wvo for the entire trip, you can just carry along a couple of extra “cubies” full of wvo. Many people have told me they want bigger fuel tanks and I don’t see why. I can fill my Mercedes 300D tank with 18 gallons, and carry 50 gallons more in the trunk. That would take me on a 1,700 mile trip!
Congratulations on the conversion!
Dan
September 5th, 2006 at 12:13 pm
We’d planned on that, but can probably only fit a couple in the bus on longer trips, because we’ll have gear and we have the camping stuff (fridge, stove, sink) which takes up quite a bit of room. Plus we’re a bit worried about weight since it’s already pretty heavy. But we might get a rack for the back (that goes on a hitch) for grease after we get a turbo engine. We definitely have quite a few cubies saved up, but I doubt 50 gallons would fit in the bus.
I’ve been looking at fillupforfree.com and also wondering if it’s possible to call restaurants in an area we’ll be going through to ask about grease, but I’m not sure if we can rely on that. Thankfully we can always run on diesel or bio-diesel, too. Depends on how long the trip is I guess, we can get over 400 miles on 1 tank. Our first grease-fueled trip is going to be only 1 hour away, but we’re planning a longer one in October so I guess we’ll be researching this stuff.