Originally Posted by
Metric Man
I watched that episode just last week Skip. All they did was filter it. Put it in a container that they were using to verify how much they were using and that was it.
OK, maybe it was a "Dirty Jobs" episode....
#14 "Bio-Diesel Man" October 25, 2005
But the fry oil was not usable with out quite a bit of home processing.
It's full of charcoaled breading from things other than french fries and other stuff.
In that episode, I'm pretty sure the engine had to be started on regular diesel and the fry oil warmed up some before the engine could be run on it.
There's a VW Jetta diesel here in my home town with a "runs on BioFuel" bumper sticker on it. The next time I see it and I can catch it, I'll try to ask the driver about it.
It might be that as Stepfam mentioned, if you start with new clean cooking oil it will work with out much modification. It he's getting cooking oil in England for that price, that's petty good. Seems when I go to buy cooking oil, it prices out to lots more than $4.00/gallon, but then that's in quart bottles, not bulk.
Another bit of trivia I seem to remember is that early diesel engines were made to run on peanut oil (found a reference to this on WikiPedia).
And as Rowan said, many farmers are thinking of skipping the corn/alcohol thing and planting canola (and others???) to get biodiesel which works in their farm equipment.