by Kevin Egan

Just what do you do?

You’ve got a new job with fantastic pay and benefits, but you have to pack around large equipment, hundreds of kilograms of hardware and tools, and shelving or racks to organize it all. Need a work truck or a van?

You’ve always ridden a bike to commute, recreate, camp, even to tow the kids. Maybe you weren’t even thinking of the environmental benefits much because (1) it’s just about how good it feels to be moving and riding, and (2), it needs minimal expenditure of your hard-earned pay. Now you suddenly went from never thinking of owning such a thing as a gas card to spending many thousands a year on dino-fuel.

OK, you’ll still ride as much as you can. You’ll leave the big van at the office and bike to the office–but oops! All that hardware cost too much to be left alone. You’re a techie with a love of things mechanical–how you can make this better? Build an electric van or truck?

Hey–what about a hybrid, or a good old diesel? Diesel motors are more economical than gas motors, but diesels are not particularly common in North America, unlike the rest of the world.

So, a diesel vehicle running on recycled fuel is an affordable way to power your vehicle–perfect. You’ve decided and don’t mind getting your hands dirty–oh, I mean greasy!

Thanks to media, most people know about vegetable-oil fuels and that the diesel engine was originally intended to work with plant oils, not petroleum. Pouring cleaned waste vegetable oil (WVO), new vegetable oil and biodiesel helps your diesel ride run a lot smoother with better emissions than gas. You might want to take it a step further by building a bio-diesel reactor or converting your ride to run strictly on WVO.

Here’s a simplified description: Biodiesel is trans-esterified plant and animal oils. Just chemically alter a batch of new or used vegetable oil, properly washed to fill up your unmodified diesel ride. With proper processing and equipment, biodiesel can suit a community coop that has good access to WVO (hotels, for example).

Using waste oil avoids taking a food product just to power vehicles, arguments over the evils of carbon output versus smog of various biodiesel products, and difficulties of processing leftovers like dirty glycerol and nasty chemicals like alcohol and lye. For bio-fuels, please stick to waste products only; let’s just recycle what’s available to us. We’ll start building some really sweet electric cars soon enough (please, I’m dying to!)–biofuel is a temporary solution.

WVO can power a diesel vehicle with hardware, installed to heat the WVO, and components, to switch from WVO to diesel. Perhaps it’s easier for a single household to clean up collected restaurant waste and use that to power the ride. Wouldn’t you want use an economical French-fry-smelling ride to get your stuff from A to B? It’s almost that simple: add a couple of hundred dollars’ worth of parts, mixed with discarded canola oil.

Anybody want help?

Editor’s notes: Use Google to find a conversion kit available to fit old diesel Volvos, VWs, Beamers and the like, which allows the driver simply to pour in the WVO and carry on. The kit mixes the WVO with the diesel. You do not need a kit to use the pre-mixed biodiesel that is so wildly popular in Hawaii, USA, and wherever biodiesel is advertised, however. In the American Northwest kits are more popular and clubs of biodiesel users sharing their expertise and experiences have sprouted. California’s emissions rules, alas, are not diesel-friendly and you can’t find a diesel New Beetle there to save your life.

As the author hints, diesel engines’ flexibility offers today’s driver greater hope of staying on the road in an economical and more ecologically friendly way until the re-birth of the electric car.