WVO Waste Vegetable Oil On-Board Filtration System?
I've been dreaming of having an on-board waste vegetable oil filtration system for my greasecar that would allow me to fill up for free on the road. The more I learn about veggie technology, the more I realize that the on-board filtration system is really a far fetched idea.
This past weekend I met a woman from Montreal who travelled cross country last summer on vegetable oil. She dove in dumpsters in back alleys and scrounged for oil every time she needed to fill up. She told me how nasty it was to try to filter all of the oil on the trip, and what a mess it made! Let me not fail to mention that 4,000 or so miles into her trip her van died.
Dead.
No mo' WVO for her!
You see, she made the common mistake of not KNOWING about what water can do to your engine.
"Water?" you ask.
You see, water that is suspended in waste vegetable oil kills your engine's injection pump. WVO that sits in dumpsters in the alley can collect rain water, snow, sleet, etc...and get contaminated. So even if you filter the oil down to 1 micron, you still haven't gotten the water out. Sure, your injectors won't clog because the oil is "clean" e.g. not got bits of french fries in it still, but unless you de-water the oil, then your injection pump is gonna pay.
Or, rather, you're gonna pay for a new injection pump, and they aren't cheap. Think something in the range of $1,000 on the low end and $2,500 on the high end to get a new pump installed in your car.
Now think about how much money you can save with vegetable oil. Doesn't even come close to the cost of a new injection pump, does it?
Simply put, to perform even the simples de-watering method you have to let the oil settle undisturbed at warm room temperature for at least a few weeks. That's simply impossible on the road, and no current machine or invention is available that will do it for you and will fit in your car.
So, gone are my dreams of an on-board filtration system in my vw veggie van. Now I am gonna take a road less travelled: the road that fillup4free.com is paving for us greasers that want to travel cross country...the road that involves sharing de-watered, filtered waste vegetable oil with road-trippin greasers.
This past weekend I met a woman from Montreal who travelled cross country last summer on vegetable oil. She dove in dumpsters in back alleys and scrounged for oil every time she needed to fill up. She told me how nasty it was to try to filter all of the oil on the trip, and what a mess it made! Let me not fail to mention that 4,000 or so miles into her trip her van died.
Dead.
No mo' WVO for her!
You see, she made the common mistake of not KNOWING about what water can do to your engine.
"Water?" you ask.
You see, water that is suspended in waste vegetable oil kills your engine's injection pump. WVO that sits in dumpsters in the alley can collect rain water, snow, sleet, etc...and get contaminated. So even if you filter the oil down to 1 micron, you still haven't gotten the water out. Sure, your injectors won't clog because the oil is "clean" e.g. not got bits of french fries in it still, but unless you de-water the oil, then your injection pump is gonna pay.
Or, rather, you're gonna pay for a new injection pump, and they aren't cheap. Think something in the range of $1,000 on the low end and $2,500 on the high end to get a new pump installed in your car.
Now think about how much money you can save with vegetable oil. Doesn't even come close to the cost of a new injection pump, does it?
Simply put, to perform even the simples de-watering method you have to let the oil settle undisturbed at warm room temperature for at least a few weeks. That's simply impossible on the road, and no current machine or invention is available that will do it for you and will fit in your car.
So, gone are my dreams of an on-board filtration system in my vw veggie van. Now I am gonna take a road less travelled: the road that fillup4free.com is paving for us greasers that want to travel cross country...the road that involves sharing de-watered, filtered waste vegetable oil with road-trippin greasers.
posted by Kristopher Setchfield at 6:15 PM
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