What Is a Grease Car?

Waste Vegetable OilA grease car is a diesel car that runs on straight or waste vegetable oil.

Basically, there are two do-it-yourself ways to use vegetable oil in a diesel engine:

1) Biodiesel is a fuel made from 80-90% vegetable oil, 10%-20% alcohol and 0.35-1.5% catalyst. Biodiesel performs reliably in all diesel engines, it cuts emissions, is mixable with petroleum diesel fuel, it is easy to make, safe to handle, no engine modifications are needed and biodiesel can be poured straight into the fuel tank.

2) Straight or waste vegetable oil. A diesel engine can run on vegetable oil as long as the engine is started on diesel fuel and the vegetable oil is heated with a fuel heater. Either used cooking oil or new vegetable oil can be used as fuel. This method involves installing a vegetable oil tank, tank selector (switch to select what tank to use)  and modifying the heater hoses of the diesel engine. The diesel engine is started on the diesel or biodiesel fuel and then switched to hot straight vegetable oil.

Alternatively you can use a mixture of veggie oil and diesel fuel to start and run the car without any modification to the car. Depending on your climate you can use approximately 80% vegetable oil and 20% diesel. You can increase the amount of diesel to make it easier on the engine to start.

When we burn vegetable oil in an internal combustion engine the carbon in the oil is turned into carbon dioxide and released into the atmosphere. The next batch of plants grown for vegetable oil will consume carbon dioxide. A crop of oil producing plants will absorb exactly the same amount of carbon dioxide in order to produce a gallon of vegetable oil emits when it is burned in an engine. Because plants produce hydrocarbons and absorb carbon dioxide, renewable fuels substantially lessen global warming caused by burning fossil fuels. And renewable fuels create new jobs for farmers.

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