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Greasy rider fuels Mercedes with vegetable oil

ASHEVILLE, North Carolina (CNN) -- Greg Melville's neighbors in Vermont looked at him like he was crazy 2½ years ago when he drove what he refers to as his "vegetable vehicle." It's a car that runs on vegetable oil instead of gasoline.


Greg Melville converted a 1985 diesel station wagon to run on vegetable oil when his family needed another car.

1 of 3 Back then, gasoline cost about $2.20 per gallon. Now that the cost of gas is nearly twice that, many Americans are starting to think that converting to a vehicle that runs on vegetable oil isn't such a bad idea.

Melville, who now lives in Asheville, North Carolina, says the decision to convert a 1985 diesel station wagon to run on vegetable oil came about when his wife was in medical school and the couple needed a second vehicle.

"We did some research and found out that the old Mercedes engines were very easy to convert, just because they are practically indestructible," Melville explained.

After he found a good deal online, the couple purchased the car and found a conversion kit from a company in Massachusetts called Grease Car. The Melvilles then took the car and kit to an expert installer in their area and in no time, they were driving around -- with free fuel.

The kit and installation cost about $1,000 each, and Melville says it took about 1½ years to recoup that cost.

"We're kind of playing with house money, because we're driving on free gas, and it's paid for itself many times over," he said.

Melville, who is a writer, has driven the gas-free vehicle more than 60,000 miles, including two cross-country trips he's written about in an upcoming book. Veggie car makes a cross-country road trip »

The converted car was outfitted with a 15-gallon tank. Melville says it gets about 20 miles per gallon, the same fuel economy it would have gotten with the original diesel system. But according to a recent editorial he wrote for The New York Times, Melville says his carbon footprint is cut in half while driving the car fueled by vegetable oil.

But all is not golden -- or green, as the case may be -- in this veggie tale.

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Melville admits that there are a few downsides to having a vegetable-oil powered vehicle. The process of collecting and filtering the grease can be time-consuming and a bit messy.

He's made arrangements to get most of his waste oil from local restaurants, and each week, his suppliers leave him five-gallon drums that he must pick up. But when he travels long distances, he has to find new restaurants on the road that are willing to give him their used grease.

Once Melville gets the grease, he pours it into a large gas can that's been painted black. The dark color helps absorb the sun's rays, which heat the oil inside. The process helps thin the grease and makes it easier to filter bits of onion rings and other fried foods.

"[It's] not always the cleanest thing. I've spilled it all over me a couple times," Melville said.

Another side effect of using vegetable oil is the smell. The undeniable aroma of french fries and other deep-fried foods wafts up frequently from the exhaust. Depending on a person's palate, the aromatherapy could be a deal-breaker or a fringe benefit.

Still, Melville says he would recommend a vegetable vehicle to anyone -- with the following caution:

"Make sure you have a supplier lined up, because suppliers are becoming harder to find."

Even though many Americans love to eat fried food, there's not enough leftover oil to power all of the cars in the United States. The vegetable-oil powered cars have become so popular, there have been reports of cooking oil thefts from eating establishments across the country and talk of restaurants charging for the leftover oil.


For now, Melville isn't concerned.

"My hope is ... by the time that happens, some other alternative l

like plug-in hybrids will come along and make these cars obsolete," he said. "Then I won't have to be filling it up with vegetable oil, and I can have a plug-in hybrid and go to a regular gas station and not have to feel guilty or worry about it."

As oil prices soar, restaurant grease theft rises
By Susan Saulny

Friday, May 30, 2008
The bandit pulled his truck to the back of a Burger King in Northern California one afternoon last month armed with a hose and a tank. After rummaging around assorted restaurant rubbish, he dunked a tube into a smelly storage bin and, the police said, vacuumed out about 300 gallons of grease.

The man was caught before he could slip away. In his truck, the police found 2,500 gallons of used fryer grease, indicating that the Burger King had not been his first fast-food craving of the day.

Outside Seattle, cooking oil rustling has become such a problem that the owners of the Olympia Pizza and Pasta Restaurant in Arlington, Washington, are considering using a surveillance camera to keep watch on its 50-gallon grease barrel. Nick Damianidis, an owner, said the barrel had been hit seven or eight times since last summer by siphoners who strike in the night.

"Fryer grease has become gold," Damianidis said. "And just over a year ago, I had to pay someone to take it away."

Much to the surprise of Damianidis and many other people, processed fryer oil, which is called yellow grease, is actually not trash. The grease is traded on the booming commodities market. Its value has increased in recent months to historic highs, driven by the even higher prices of gas and ethanol, making it an ever more popular form of biodiesel to fuel cars and trucks.

In 2000, yellow grease was trading for 7.6 cents per pound. On Thursday, its price was about 33 cents a pound, or almost $2.50 a gallon. (That would make the 2,500-gallon haul in the Burger King case worth more than $6,000.)

Biodiesel is derived by processing vegetable oil or animal fat with alcohol. It is increasingly available around the country, but it is expensive. With the right kind of conversion kit (easily found on the Internet) anyone can turn discarded cooking oil into a usable engine fuel that can burn on its own, or as a cheap additive to regular diesel.

"The last time kids broke in here they went for the alcohol," said Damianidis, who fries chicken wings and cheese sticks. "Obviously they're stealing oil because it's worth something."

While there have been reports of thefts in multiple states, law enforcement officials do not compile national statistics and it remains unclear whether this is part of a passing trend or something more serious.

The suspects in a growing number of grease infractions fall into a range of categories, people interviewed on the matter said, as grease theft is a crime of opportunity. They include do-it-yourself environmentalists worried about their carbon footprints, warring waste management firms trying to beat each other on the sly, and petty thieves who are profiting from the oil's rising value on the black market.

"It's a new oddity," said Officer Seth Hanson of the Federal Way Police Department, near Tacoma, Washington He said thefts occur outside at least a couple of restaurants there each week. "We're trying to get an eyeball on how well-organized it is, if at all. To date, we haven't been very successful in finding anybody."

Thefts have been reported in at least 20 states, said Christopher Griffin, whose family owns Griffin Industries, one of the largest grease collection and rendering companies in the country. The problem has gotten so bad, Griffin has hired two detectives to investigate thefts around the country.

"Theft is theft," said Griffin, who is based in Cold Spring, Kentucky "I don't care if you're stealing grease or if you're stealing diamonds."

Fryer oil from a restaurant that does a high volume of frying one kind of food — for example, a fried-chicken chain — is at a premium because of its relative purity. The large-scale producers of grease, restaurants mostly, own their old oil and in recent months have even made a small profit by selling it to collectors.

Because of the grease's rancid odor, most restaurants usually store it out back with the trash.

"Once you put something in the trash, it's abandoned property," said Jon Jaworski, a lawyer in Houston who represents accused grease thieves. "A lot of times, it's not theft."

Even so, most restaurant owners and grease collectors say that grease is not free for the taking.

"There's a new fight for the product, definitely a whole new demand sector," said Bill Smith, a market reporter for Urner Barry's Yellow Sheet, an industry newsletter that tracks yellow grease. "Grease theft is becoming a bigger and bigger issue."

In the case of the Burger King theft, in Morgan Hill, California, the police were alerted to suspicious activity by a neighbor who runs his own grease collection and recycling business and is on the lookout for rustlers.

Driving through town, the neighbor, Mark Rosenzweig, said he spotted the suspect's truck because "it stuck out." He said he followed it for blocks before it pulled into the Burger King. Rosenzweig said he knew the man who holds the Burger King grease account, so he called him.

"I had to give everybody a roadside tutorial on grease theft," Rosenzweig said of his next call — to the police. "Ten years ago we couldn't give this stuff away. Now everybody's fighting over it."

The suspect in the case, a 49-year-old man who said he was from Las Vegas, has yet to enter a plea, and is due in court next in July.

A typical fast-food restaurant produces 150 to 250 pounds of grease a week. Many do not even know when a theft occurs because it usually happens overnight. Most security cameras and night watchmen are focused on cash registers, not the trash.

"Who do you go after?" said Jason Christensen, a trader of fats and oils for the AgriTrading Corporation, in Minnesota. "I sense you'll start seeing more surveillance equipment put in to monitor these storage facilities at the restaurant. As the price goes up, you can afford to spend a little more to protect your interest."

And there is so much interest in grease these days.

The City of San Francisco has its own grease recycling program run through the Public Utilities Commission called SFGreasecycle, which collects discarded vegetable oil from city restaurants at no charge and recycles it into biodiesel for use in the city fleet.

Healy Biodiesel, a company in Sedgwick, Kansas, says it offers a top-quality fuel made from local cooking oils.

Ben Healy, the owner, has contracts to collect the raw grease from several franchises around town.

"One particular night not too long ago, 9 out of 15 were stolen," he said of the grease bins. "That's a majority of the oil and it was a big kick in the stomach."

At Olympia Pizza and Pasta, Damianidis, who now sells his grease for a small monthly fee, finds the problem of stolen fryer oil quite annoying and distracting. And he wants to stop the thefts. He is leaning toward a security camera and hoping for the best.

"I cook food," Damianidis said. "I'm not going to stay up until 2 in the morning trying to catch someone stealing a barrel of grease."

Camisa Roxa Escreveu:a palhaçada que é este país:

«Uma condutora que seguia num carro movido a óleo de fritar batatas viu o automóvel apreendido numa Operação Stop. Disseram-lhe que tinha de pagar imposto sobre o óleo, mas ninguém lhe consegue explicar como é que se paga esse imposto. E, enquanto se arrasta a encruzilhada de leis, o carro continua apreendido. (…) Só que a lei diz que qualquer carburante tem de pagar imposto. E foi aí que os problemas começaram. João quis pagar o tal imposto, mas ninguém lhe soube dizer como é que isso se faz.
A lei é omissa quanto ao que fazer perante pequenas quantidades de carburante alternativo. O que lhe disseram na alfândega é que não havendo lei não pode usar óleo vegetal.» (na Sic, dica de Bruno)

Para além do caricato, do absurdo, da prepotência e do abuso de autoridade, temos a clara enunciação do principio da desconfiança do funcionalismo face ao cidadão: não está previsto, não pode. Quando é exactamente ao contrário.

o que também sobressai desta história é que o imposto sobre os combustíveis, mais não é que um imposto de circulação disfarçado. O que é grave e não um mero pormenor: Os impostos têm de estar directamente relacionados com o produto, o serviço sobre que recaem. Faltando essa relação directa, saímos do absurdo e entramos no campo da ilegitimidade.

«Uma condutora que seguia num carro movido a óleo de fritar batatas viu o automóvel apreendido numa Operação Stop. Disseram-lhe que tinha de pagar imposto sobre o óleo, mas ninguém lhe consegue explicar como é que se paga esse imposto. E, enquanto se arrasta a encruzilhada de leis, o carro continua apreendido. (…) Só que a lei diz que qualquer carburante tem de pagar imposto. E foi aí que os problemas começaram. João quis pagar o tal imposto, mas ninguém lhe soube dizer como é que isso se faz.
A lei é omissa quanto ao que fazer perante pequenas quantidades de carburante alternativo. O que lhe disseram na alfândega é que não havendo lei não pode usar óleo vegetal.» (na Sic, dica de Bruno)

Para além do caricato, do absurdo, da prepotência e do abuso de autoridade, temos a clara enunciação do principio da desconfiança do funcionalismo face ao cidadão: não está previsto, não pode. Quando é exactamente ao contrário.

tiagopt Escreveu:Expliquem-me como se eu fosse uma criança de 2 anos... óleo das batatas fritas no meu carro??? Sem fazer nenhuma modificação no motor, nem nada do género?? Isso é mesmo verdade? E resulta?

earth2tech.com Escreveu:
...

Fourth Generation:

Fourth-generation technology combines genetically optimized feedstocks, which are designed to capture large amounts of carbon, with genomically synthesized microbes, which are made to efficiently make fuels. Key to the process is the capture and sequestration of CO2, a process that renders fourth-generation biofuels a carbon negative source of fuel. However, the weak link is carbon capture and sequestration technology, which continues to elude the coal industry.

Venter says his Synthetic Genomics can make moot the issue of CO2 capture. His company plans to combine the processes of feedstock growth and fuel processing by designing organisms that will inhale CO2 and excrete sugars. We’ll see if these potentially world-saving bugs become a reality in the next 18 months.

JAM Escreveu:Já há muito tempo que se vinha falando que os biocombustíveis iriam levar à competição entre comida e combustível. Nunca esperava que fosse tão rápido, mas em 2007 os biocombustiveis assumiram um protagonismo muito rápido e agora é o que se vê. Ainda estamos no início e as cotas que alguns paises querem impôr de consumo ainda estão por atingir.

O crómio está absolutamente cheio de razão, muita gente irá passar fome.

O que me faz lembrar outra série mas ainda melhor: As Misteriosas Cidades de Ouro, francesa de muitíssima qualidade, bem documentada e com uma ficção científica deliciosa...

wikipedia Escreveu:Quantity of feedstocks required

Worldwide production of vegetable oil and animal fat is not yet sufficient to replace liquid fossil fuel use. Furthermore, some object to the vast amount of farming and the resulting fertilization, pesticide use, and land use conversion that would be needed to produce the additional vegetable oil.

The estimated transportation diesel fuel and home heating oil used in the United States is about 160 million tonnes (350 billion pounds) according to the Energy Information Administration, US Department of Energy - [27]. In the United States, estimated production of vegetable oil for all uses is about 11 million tonnes (24 billion pounds) and estimated production of animal fat is 5.3 million tonnes (12 billion pounds).[28]

Crómio Escreveu:Basta filtrar o óleo usado e é exactamente a mesma coisa.