Power Your Car With Recycled Vegetable Oil

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A new group of eco-friendly entrepreneurs are tackling the problem of the planet's dwindling fossil fuel reserves with bio-fuels. They are using waste cooking oil to run anything from motor vehicles to heating systems.

Unlike fossil fuels, vegetable oil does not continually increase the polluting carbon emissions in the atmosphere. Plants absorb carbon dioxide. Vegetable oils are made from plants. When you burn vegetable oil, the amount of carbon dioxide released is equal to the amount the plant absorbed when it was alive and growing. Ergo, carbon neutrality.

In addition, used vegetable oil can be obtained for free. Restaurants have to pay for disposal of used cooking oil and so are more than happy to give it away.

Antony Berretti converted his Fiat to run on used cooking and drove all over Europe for three months using waste vegetable oil he scrounged from restaurants.

In Massachusetts, a company called Greasecar Vegetable Fuel Systems produces conversion kits that enable your cars to run on waste cooking oil. It has been in business for 9 years and has sold 3,500 kits priced between $800 and $2,000. The company reports sales have doubled annually in recent years.

Within a short few months, the savings in fuel costs will have offset the cost of the conversion kit. "Beyond that, it's money in your pocket," said owner and founder of Greasecar.

There is one catch. You must have a diesel car in order to convert it to run on waste cooking oil. Diesel cars typically get 20%-30% more mileage than gas propelled vehicles. Vegetable oil is similar to diesel and provides about the same increase in mileage.

Two other companies, Philadelphia-based Fry-O-Diesel and North American Biofuels which runs out of Long Island, are converting the trap grease from restaurant sink traps into clean-burning biodiesel for use in heating systems and transportation.

On its website, Fry-O-Diesel cites the following statistics:

* Restaurant and food service companies in the City of Brotherly Love generate 4-5 million gallons of yellow grease annually.

* In excess of 2 million gallons of trap grease are gathered monthly in southeast Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Trap grease is of no value and is incinerated or dumped in landfills.

* As restaurants must pay for removal of yellow and trap grease, some dispose of it illegally in dumpsters or down sewer lines to save money.

Fry-O-Diesel spent 15 months in testing the feasibility of transporting grease pumped out of restaurant sink traps (needed to separate the grease from water) to an experimental plant. The company claims they have demonstrated the concept of producing and consuming a biodiesel fuel close to the source of the grease works. With soy-based biodiesel, the fuel must be transported from long distances.

Fry-O-Diesel claims its biodiesel needs no adaptation for use in most diesel engines and that is a better lubricant than regular diesel fuel as well as biodegradeable. They are now in the stages of setting up commercial production.

Will waste cooking oil become the fuel of the future? According to Steve Bantz, an engineer with the Union of Concerned Scientists, there just is not enough of it around to make it a major energy source.

About 3.8 billion pounds of restaurant grease is produced annually in the U.S. That amount would only make 495 million gallons of biodiesel or heating fuel which would only be enough to provide 1% of the nation's diesel consumption.

While it will never play a major role, there is no doubt there is a place for biofuels. As Banz puts its: "We have to look under every rock and down every drain for alternative energy sources."