Anyone use Waste Veggie Oil?

Looking for anyone that uses waste veggie oil (WVO) for their converted diesel vehicle. I'm love to hear best practices for filtering with the least amount of mess. All benefits and downsides. Feasibility of small-scale operations. Space requirements for storage. I'd love to consider WVO for our diesel van, but space is an issue. We live in an old neighborhood and only have a 1-car garage for storage that was built when model-t's were the rage. TIA!

The product is often called Bio diesel

Thank you for the video, really enjoyed it. I'm going to look for the book he recommended. We are concerned about the o-rings and rubber seals in the van too. We've heard WVO can be problematic and cause some seals to fail depending on the vehicle.

Denise - my degree was in chemical engineering and at the time biodiesel from waste vegetable oil was somehow the next big thing. There was huge pressure to innovate with the technology, and businesses based on it were springing up like weeds.

The enthusiasm very quickly died off, because the practicalities of scale are simply not there. Each of these waste recyclers was dashing around competing for the same limited waste product. The bottom line is that there is simply not enough waste vegetable oil to replace the fuel needs of everyone who was chasing it. People ended up paying to remove waste oil, and it very soon became uncompetitive to do. There were runs on the supermarkets, where every bottle of cheap cooking oil was swiped for one person to make fuel for their car, because it worked out at a few pence per litre cheaper than fuel at the pumps!

So my advice, before you get too far down this rabbit hole, is to look carefully at the available supply of waste oil. Be aware that most businesses likely have a company that pays to collect it, so there is unlikely to be a large amount freely available. You could end up investing a lot of time and money in collecting and processing your own waste oil, to make a product that is more expensive than fuel at the pumps. You are can't claim an environmental advantage either, because the person who usual collects and reprocesses it will most likely be making biodiesel anyway. All you are doing is transferring the production of it from them to you.

You MAY be in a fortunate position where you have WVO freely available, but that is very much the exception rather than the rule.

Biofuels in general are problematic. Biodiesel in particular was massively promoted in the early 2000s and governments heavily subsidised oil crops and production. It triggered global environmental devastation - high vegetable oil prices clearing of rainforests for oil crop planting, agricultural land was diverted from growing food to growing fuel which contributed to rising fuel prices etc... And they actual growing of these dedicated oil crops tends to use nearly as much fossil fuel the biodiesel produced.

Look at this couple and their Veggie Van
Veggie Van story

Denise Kersting wrote:Looking for anyone that uses waste veggie oil (WVO) for their converted diesel vehicle. I'm love to hear best practices for filtering with the least amount of mess. All benefits and downsides. Feasibility of small-scale operations. Space requirements for storage. I'd love to consider WVO for our diesel van, but space is an issue. We live in an old neighborhood and only have a 1-car garage for storage that was built when model-t's were the rage. TIA!

Hi Denise,
I've been running WVO as well as biodiesel in my two-tank setup successfully since 2015. Thus far I've driven tens of thousands of miles on it, saved tons of money, produced less toxic emissions, kept the carbon within the carbon cycle (the plants used to grow the fuel inhale the carbon dioxide emitted by the exhaust), and have been reaping the benefits for years.

Sourcing is simple: order a meal, be nice, eat, ask for a manager or the head cook, be polite and request some WVO. This has worked for me 100% of the time.

The best practice for filtering and dewatering used cooking oil is to use a centrifuge. Other techniques do not remove sufficient water and the centrifuge will save you from buying too many on-board WVO filters as the centrifuge filters particulates to smaller than the micron rating of on-board filters. The only downside is the up-front cost of the centrifuge.

I collected, filtered, dewatered, and ran on WVO for 3 years as a nomad. I've got the small space situation dialed in!

Small-scale is the way to go. "Scaling up" was sooo 20th century. My vertical filtration setup is about 6 feet tall with a 2 foot square footprint.

One can store dirty vegetable oil in the 5-gallon carboys they originally came in (my preference), plastic drums, or in intermediate bulk containers (IBC). My best practice for space efficiency is to filter the dirty veggie oil from a 5 gallon carboy as soon as I get it and store the resulting clean veggie oil in my vehicle's WVO tank. Much more space efficient this way.

Hope this helps. Happy greasing.

I HAVE used WVO in my dual diesel/wvo fuel 7.3L F-350 utility truck circa 2006. Truck got wrecked but I’m looking for a 7.3 van for traveling. I saved all the wvo innards from the old truck si I have a head start for the next conversion. (Some newer diesels with computer controls may not “like” wvo, but there is often aftermarket tuning software available to make various adjustments that may work, if needed.)
My wvo fuel system had a separate tank and fuel lines and a multi-port valve for switching back and forth from diesel (or biodiesel) to the wvo. The whole wvo system was heated with coolant from the warm engine. It’s a bit complicated but I got all the bugs worked out. I have photos of the whole setup. It was fun.