Forget Water For Gas… You Can Make Your Own Fuel For Your Car With Deep Fry Oil

Soaring global oil prices based on an unsettled mid-east, increased consumer demand in China and dwindling oil supply has forced the search for alternate fuel sources to power your car. So imagine running your auto on a clean burning alternate fuel that would cost less that a dollar per gallon, and your exhaust would smell like french fries.

So imagine again that you can legally make this petro yourself, and it can be as easy as making up a batch of bran muffins.

So get together a few simple household ingredients, a pair of rubber latex gloves, a food processor or mixer and yes indeed, you can make your own homemade green fuel.

This is actually happening in a handful of neighborhood garages across North America. Yes, home brewed gas is a reality to combat the high gas prices by simply recycling used household vegetable oil and converting it into a useful clean burning bio-diesel. These backyard, home based “home-brewers” with green eco ideas, are actually making their own fuel to power their car from the no longer used deep-fry oil that local restaurants simply dispose of every week.

Local, state and national regulatory issues are still not determined on its legality, however, there is no doubt the home cooked formula does work to power an engine.

This ‘home-brewed’ energy trend has reached unexpected proportions in the United States where the so called “grease wars” has private home brew producers fighting over discarded restaurant oil. This oil waste in the bio-diesel industry in known as “feedstock.” To combat the skyrocketing international gas prices, the unwanted “yellow grease” the restaurants once used to pay to have picked up and hauled away has now become a valuable commodity. A lot of restaurateurs are now charging the deep fry oil collectors around 10 cents a gallon or more for the once useless sludgy oil so the “backyard brewers” can make their own fuel.

Bio-diesel or alternate fuels, can be made from natural common waste products such as used vegetable oil, or from crops such as algae, corn or canola. The bio-diesel solution was once thought of as a cheap cure for the rising world oil prices as well as reducing carbon emissions. Recently however, bio diesel that has been manufactured from “virgin feedstock” such as corn, has been blamed for the recent skyrocketing global food prices as well as environmental degradation.

So this has become a classic ‘Catch 22′ situation. We need lower cost substantial alternate fuel sources, but it’s directed related and blamed towards the recent soaring food prices. The “food for fuel” movement has some environmentalists suggest that up to 70 per cent of the recent rise in world food costs can be directly blamed to the use of land once used for farming, to grow crops for bio diesel production.

But back to useless, unwanted restaurant vegetable oil to produce bio diesel fuel. It’s about a viable solution that works, as well as it saves money and about being green, thus the increased popularity.

On a commercial basis, there are committed ‘green’ people sprouting throughout the nation who are operating their own biodiesel powered pumps. These places offers this alternate fuel, known as ‘Top Grade B100′ to their members co-op, for anyone wishing to use bio diesel in their vehicles, (which is completely safe), usually for a small annual membership fee.

Their commitment to alternate, cheaper and cleaner burning fuel is both a personal as well as a business decision. So, after a lot of research, they committed on working towards a biodiesel solution which produces fuel made from 100-per-cent, unwanted recycled materials such as vegetable oil.

How About Some Home Made Brew
Outside from the mainstream biodiesel movement, there are a growing number of individuals who are successfully producing their own homemade biodiesel, and they won’t be paying for actual fuel from the pump, any time soon.

Bert is a small homebased producer, making biodiesel for his own personal use, primarily to just save money.

He says he had to hone his chemistry skills, and once he got the formula right, and once he was up and running, he found the process quite simple. First, he had to phone local restaurants to secure the unused oil, which he found was not that easy as the trend was already in motion, thanks to established site such as: journeytoforever.org.

What’s now becoming scarce is his primary energy source, which is unwanted restaurant oil. But once secured, he has been steadily producing in his own fuel out of his garage. He estimates he’s cut his fuel costs by a least a third.

So Give Me The Recipe To Making My Own Bio-Fuel
Meet John, a successful fisherman who depends on the bio-fuel that he makes to run his fleet of commercial fishing boats. He streamlined his home made fuel producing plant that transforms discarded fry oil he gets from local restaurants and turns it into clean burning biodiesel.

He started to produce his own biodiesel to offset the spiraling fuel prices as wells as it is environmentally cleaner than conventional gas.

John, working out of his small workshop on a private property in an industrial neighborhood, claims he produces enough environmentally clean, biodiesel every month to power his boats and his car. In the competitive fishing business, he claim this is the only way he can stay in business.

So if you’re thinking that someone who built his own 200 gallon vat in his garage to process unwanted oil is one of those tree hugging survivalist types, you would be mistaken.

He’s actually a pretty regular guy — just someone who knows a little bit more than the rest of us about making his own fuel and saving a buck or two.

The process is actually a fairly simple piece of processing machinery, complete with a thermometer from a barbecue, to measure the temperature of 130 degrees, which is the ideal processing temperature.

- The first step is collecting the oil or ‘feedstock’. John has built up a few sources to keep this enterprise going, which is a steady supply of unwanted, used cooking oil, which he collects in his pickup truck, complete with a built in ‘vat’ to collect the oil.

There are actually quite a few different variations during the production process, but all is just “basic chemistry.”

- The home made processor heats at the regulated temperate of 130 degrees which mixes the oil, then he adds a chemical, (potassium hydroxide), which is a caustic catalyst, which converts the resident free fatty acid. The mixture then processes for up to six hours after which glycerin, a non-toxic by-product of the process, settles out.

- After draining the glycerin, (which is useful and donated to soap makers), a wash cycle starts where water is added to the fuel to flush out the remaining residual soaps. This process takes around 48 hours.

- Next the water is drained out which “dries” the oil, the solution is then brought back up to the 130 degree temperature again to burn off any remaining residual water left over from the washing.

Once the fuel is filtered, you’re are then ready to go. Just put it in your car and zoom.

The process is not exactly rocket science and variations of it has been around for years. Other sources, other than collecting restaurant grease can be biodiesel from soy and any other recycled sources.

Now this solution won’t solve the current world oil problems, but it does alleviate the pressure and makes people feel good about saving money and doing something green. Making bio diesel is a simple process, but there is limited yellow restaurant grease out there. Competition to get this grease is becoming quite fierce, and yes, there has been a lot of theft.

This industry is on the uprise because of national tax incentives and the price of oil inching up to $145-a-barrel oil. It is only a matter of time until big business gets in the act or big brothre quashes it altogether.