Converting an engine to use cooking oil...or other alternative fuels...?

Question

I thought of the used cooking oil because of "invention nation" on the science channel....They use a bus to cross the county that uses used cooking oil instead of gas....

I want to convert a road worthy scooter's engine to use alternative fuel but don't know the first thing about how...

can anyone point me in the right direction?

I could even go for a mid sized family car's engine conversion...

Answer 1

http://www.knowledgepublications.com/hyd...

Answer 2

Okay,  listen carefully.

cooking oil = bio DIESEL.

ethanol = GASOLINE extender.

Don't get them confused. It'll kill your car!

Answer 3

sounds good to me

Answer 4

There are no diesel engined scooters, so no way to make them run on cooking oil.

Diesel car or light trucks can run on cooking oil, essentially without conversion. What you have to do is get the cooking oil very very clean, removing food particulates and water.

Next, because there has been a lot of interest in this fuel, you will have to buy a supply running into the future.

If you go this way you may want to be aware that the city of Stratford, Ontario after running a small fleet of diesel engines on reclaimed cooking oil has decided that they have had far too many maintenance problems and stopped the project.

During WW2 a number of vehicles were running on a pyrolitic system... almost any solid fuel would be pyrolized into gas, which the engine burned like propane. Once again getting the gas ultra clean was the challenge. The gum that would form on the walls of the collecting chamber could be returned to the pyrolitic chamber for revaporization. A spray of water on the red hot charcoal would produce an extra supply of methane (plus CO2)

Maintenance problems there too were the reason we stopped using this.

Fuels like wood, paper, grass, seaweed, plastics can all be converted to a combustible gas.

The fuel gas can be compressed centrally and carried as a compressed natural gas would be, or the pyrolitic system could be on the vehicle.

The units mounted on vehicles were a royal pain in the neck.

Answer 5

The top contributer in this post has no idea what he is talking about. There are diesel scooters out there, but they are about twice as expensive as unleaded scooters. I've considered buying one, but I live in Minnesota and with 6+ months of winter it didn't make a lot of sense to spend that kind of money.

Below is a link for a book that walks you through how to do it. I looked through this book at my local store. It was fairly detailed. Also, here is a link to a diesel scooter, which according to whats-his-name above...doesn't exist. (Its only $900 too...not bad to perform an experiment on prior to attempting to convert a car that is far more costly)

Answer 6

fattywagons .com cheapest best setup.

Answer 7

Your question is a little to vague to answer straight up.  The advice I can give however, is look at what you have and go from there.  If you engines burn gasoline, ethanol is the way to go, even hydrogen if you really know what you are doing.  If you burn diesel, then go with the cooking oil.  If you want to do a total remake of the car, you could even go electric if you want.

email me if you want to take this further

Answer 8

For your scooter you'll need to alter your carburetor, if you want to use straight ethanol. Of course you could use a 10% mix of ethanol to gasoline without too many problems. You understand that you will get fewer miles per gallon and have a loss in power.

As for your car unless it’s old enough to have a carburetor, it’ll be more work then it’s worth, just use a 10% blend of ethanol to gasoline.

You could buy a diesel engine and replace the one on the scooter and make bio-diesel same for the car but the cost for the car is very high. For the scooter you’d be looking at under $1500 US.

Hope it helps