Issaquah man modifies car engine to run on vegetable oil

By Manuel Valdes
Seattle Times Eastside bureau

Between school, work and errands, James Colver estimates he drives more than 2,400 miles each month in his diesel-fueled Mercedes.

Yet the Issaquah resident spends only about $75 a month on fuel.

How does he do it? The answer is found in your local restaurant's kitchen.

Last July, Colver bought a kit that modified his car's diesel engine to run on vegetable oil.

Now, Colver gets about 1,200 miles per tank of diesel fuel when he combines it with a tank of vegetable oil. That's about 85 miles per gallon of diesel.

Colver, 27, a student at Bellevue Community College, recycles used vegetable oil he gets free from high-end Eastside restaurants. He said he installed the kit to make school more affordable.

"It feels good to save that much money on fuel," Colver said. "It's really important to do this to get my cost down."

Although not everyone is willing to go to the same trouble as Colver to save on fuel costs, companies offering the kits are popping up nationwide to test the market, including at least one Washington.

Christopher Goodwin, owner of Seattle-based Frybrid, said his company has sold more than 500 kits to customers around the country in the past two years. But he doesn't expect demand to grow much.

Most people won't go to the trouble of installing a kit and collecting the oil, he said, even though it saves money and is more environmentally friendly than gasoline. Priced from $900 to $1,500, the kits only work on diesel engines.

The Environmental Protection Agency says it is not able to confirm whether vegetable-oil conversion kits are better for the environment, said Wayne Elson of the EPA's Air Quality division in Seattle.

The state Department of Licensing said it is just beginning to learn about the kits and has no way of knowing who is using them. One concern is that users avoid paying the state fuel tax.

"It presents some problems," said spokesman Brad Benfield. "There's really no way to identify who might be doing that ... [and] we don't have a mechanism for individuals to pay fuel tax directly."

In some states, running a car on vegetable oil raises other issues. Laws in Alabama and California prohibit people from collecting used vegetable oil from restaurants without a license.

The notion of using vegetable oils as a form of fuel has been around since the early 1900s. Rudolf Diesel, who developed the engine named after him, envisioned cars using vegetable oils as early as 1911.

"It's nothing new," Goodwin said. "It has caught on quite a few times, then dropped to obscurity quite a few times."

Using vegetable oil to run a diesel engine is not the same as using biodiesel. With biodiesel, the oil is modified, while in the kit's case the diesel engine is altered, Goodwin said.

The kit includes a metal tank that is installed in the trunk of the vehicle. The tank is filled with vegetable oil, which then runs to the engine through a pipe attached underneath the car. A switch on the car's front panel controls whether the engine is burning diesel or vegetable fuel.

A user needs to start the car with diesel to reach the high temperature needed to burn the oil as fuel. The driver then switches to vegetable oil, returning to diesel before the engine is turned off. If a car is left with the vegetable-oil kit on and temperatures drop, the driver will be left with gooey fat inside the engine.

Most kits are intended to be installed by users. Colver said it took him a weekend to install his and that extensive mechanical background is not needed.

So far, the kit has worked as advertised for Colver's vintage Mercedes.

Using a plastic 55-gallon drum, equipped with a motor, hose and nozzle, Colver and his wife pump out the oil he collects from five restaurants about every month. They refill their tank about every week.

The car's emissions smell like something out of a kitchen.

Colver said on one occasion a motorcyclist driving behind him pulled up to his window and remarked his car was making him hungry.

Jokes aside, Colver feels that he's helping the environment by recycling the used vegetable oil.

He said the only negative change is a slight drop in horsepower, but he says he doesn't mind.

After all, he's getting 1,200 miles per tank of fuel.