Car eats its vegetables
ALTERNATIVE FUEL | Modified Jetta uses veggie oil from restaurants
Jim Gill said he bought about 40 gallons of petroleum diesel last year for his Volkswagen Jetta. And he drove the car roughly 8,000 miles.
No, his VW doesn't get 200 miles a gallon. It's just that Gill uses something else as the main source of fuel for his silver 2000 Jetta.
Vegetable oil.
(Keith Hale/Sun-Times)
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"It's the right thing to do," says Gill, an environmental engineer. "And the price is right, too: I get the oil for free."
Instead of pulling up to the pump at the corner gas station, Gill makes periodic trips to an ice-cream shop in Oak Park and to his family's favorite Japanese restaurant in Forest Park to pick up the oil they used for french fries and tempura.
They're happy to get rid of it; restaurants typically pay someone to take it.
Gill runs the discarded oil through a homemade filter in his garage to weed out any "yucky food gunk," then pours the filtered vegetable oil into a secondary fuel tank that he had installed in the trunk of the car.
The setup suits him just fine. Federal environmental officials worry, though, that converted cars might emit more soot.
"We really can't recommend it," says John Millet, a spokesman for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. "Right now, there is no EPA-certified conversion kit or a pure vegetable oil that is a registered fuel. It's illegal, and it may damage the engine."
It also could bring a $2,750 fine, though that hasn't happened.
To start his car, Gill has to use its standard diesel-fuel system. That's because the vegetable oil needs a few minutes to heat up before it's the right consistency. Once it's hot enough, the car automatically switches from diesel to vegetable oil.
"It's a seamless transition," Gill says.
It cost him nearly $1,600 to buy the Frybrid conversion kit that allows his diesel engine to run on straight vegetable oil. Gill paid another $1,100 to have the conversion kit installed. (Only cars with diesel engines, not gas, can be converted.)
But there is one, uh, side effect of converting to run on oil that's been used to make french fries and tempura: the scent of fried food that trails Gill. Which makes it easy for his middle-school son to know he's there when he picks him up at school.
"He'll tell me, 'I knew you were here. I could smell you.' "
