Collection Has Begun

Even before performing the conversion on the Merzola, I have begun collecting waste vegetable oil (WVO). I must acknowledge that the first person to donate to my cause was Louie. He gave me a 7oz jar of left-overs to start my collection. It is still sitting on my desk at work.

It would take a heck of a long time to gather enough veggie oil for fuel if I go about it in 7oz increments, so where do people get large quantities of oil, you may ask?

Not McDonald's...apparently, most fast food restaurants use oil with shortening in it. Oil with shortening tends to clog up fuel lines, so I need to look for 100% vegetable oil.

I started asking around, and the general consensus is sushi restaurants. Apparently, sushi restaurants change their oil quite frequently so they can keep their tempura nice and white. Now days, it seems like there is a sushi restaurant on every corner, so I have lots to choose from. My only fear is a potential language barrier in trying to explain what I plan to do with the oil.

As of 2000, the US was producing in excess of 11 billion liters of waste vegetable oil annually, mainly from industrial deep fryers in potato processing plants, snack food factories and fast food restaurants. If all those 11 billion liters could be collected and used to replace the energetically equivalent amount of petroleum (an ideal case), almost 1% of US oil consumption could be offset. However, use of waste vegetable oil as a fuel competes with some already established uses. (from Wikipedia)

This is kind of scary...even if we fully utilized all of the waste veggie oil, it would barely move the needle. It turns out that most waste veggie oil in the US is used to spray on livestock feed (eww). I believe that practice has been banned in Europe.

For starters, I have a friend who runs a restaurant in town. He doesn't go through a lot of oil, but said he would be happy to set it aside for me. It turns out, it's about 4-5 gallons per week. That's not enough to get me where I need to go, but it's a good start. In fact, I calculate that if I can get my greasy hands on another 5-10 gallons per week, I will have plenty for my daily travels as well as a chance to stockpile a bit for road-trips.

So any of you dedicated readers (all 1 of you) out there know of a grease connection, feel free to send it my way.

For now, I will continue to buy biodiesel.