Veggie Golf
Converting a 1985 VW Golf to run on waste vegetable oil.By: Paul Noskowiak
No, not Bio-Diesel, leftover veggie oil! Bio-Diesel is technically derived from soybeans much like ethanol from corn.
Bio can be run in basically any diesel powered vehicle. The hurdle to overcome with veggie is the viscosity; it is too thick at most temperatures to be run through a conventional fuel system. Therefore it either needs to be refined, and thinned, which can be done, but is potentially dangerous. The other method is to heat the oil prior to injecting into your engine, and thus thinning it enough to run thru your fuel system, and burn just like diesel fuel would.
I choose to heat my oil; I am Polish have enough experience trying to blow myself up.
Sorry the picture quality is not ideal.
The car: 1985 VW Golf, 1.6L diesel, 348,156 miles +/- Good for about 46 mpg on regular diesel fuel.
This is a picture of the 18 gallon tank I mounted in the trunk. I choose to heat my oil with the coolant from the engine. This takes a little longer then heating it with an electric heater, but it is a much more dependable system in my opinion. The large black hose coming into the trunk is actually three hoses in one. Two coolant hoses and a fuel line, these bring coolant from the engine back to a heat exchanger in the tank to heat the oil, by enclosing them with the fuel line it also heats and maintains the oil temperature all the way back to the engine as well. The large canister mounted to the tank is a large truck style fuel filter, the bigger the better to allow better filtering, and longer filter life, hopefully about 4000 miles to a filter.
Here then is the engine compartment. At he top left attached to the blue fuel hose is a switching valve, this is the same valve used on a vehicle with twin fuel tanks, like a pick-up truck. This is controlled from inside the car, and allows me to switch from regular diesel fuel to the veggie oil once it is hot enough (ideally about 150 degrees or better). The orange tape you see is some heat wire I added, it is taped with silicone directly to the fuel injector rails, this heats the fuel to approx 200 degrees right before it enters the engine, this really works well, the hotter the fuel before it enters the engine the better it will atomize and burn. I have also added a vacuum gauge to the main fuel line; this will tell me when my filter is in need of replacement.
It is really a pretty basic system, and I have not noticed any difference in performance, mpg, or power. There is however a very different smell, like bunt popcorn!
The most commonly asked question is about the oil and how and where I get it. If you look behind your favorite restaurants you will see large black plastic dumpsters, these are filled with the waste oil from the restaurants fryers. With a little silver tongued savvy getting the oil is usually no problem. It is after all something they are throwing away, and most places pay to get rid of it, so they are usually more then happy to let you take it.
You do however need to be careful with your selection. Some places will use there oil until it is almost unrecognizable, or they will leave the top off there container, and allow it to fill up with water among other things. Most non-fast food places dump there oil fairly often to maintain quality tasting food, these are the best places to collect oil, I for example only need about ten gallons a week, so once you have some surplus on hand you don’t need to find that much. I have one restaurant in particular that supplies me with more than enough. Stopping in once a week for lunch doesn’t hurt either.
Once I have the oil I can’t just dump it in the car, you could but the filters would not last very long. So I have built a “still” so to speak. I take the oil I have collected and dump it into the black drum. Once that drum is full, about 50 gallons I heat it, (the heater is the orange box on the end of the drum) I am still experimenting, but heating it for about 24 hours will boil out any water and bacteria’s, then I let it cool down to about 80-100 degrees when I open a valve and siphon it thru a 1 micron filter bag into the red storage tank on the bottom, this tank holds about 65 gallons of cleaned ready to use oil. From there I use the pump on the other end, and pump it into the car, and drive away.
It has been a pretty significant undertaking, but now that’s its up and running, its just a matter collecting some oil every few weeks, and changing the bag, and filters every so often, which definitely beats the $3 plus a gallon at the pump plus its very enviro friendly.
Send me an send me an email if you have some questions, check out http://www.goldenfuelsystems.com or stop by for a tour sometime!