Category: Notebook

Does anyone have any more information on the 46 cent diesel fuel thing I’ve seen going around?

From their web site:

DSE has developed a revolutionary method for producing an inexpensive, high performance fuel that can power ANY DIESEL ENGINE and the cost to you is only *46¢ per gallon! That means over $3+ savings for EVERY gallon of our fuel you use!

You have NOT heard of this before. This is an entirely new way in America to make your own fuel from fry oils that takes only minutes. It can be used as a 100% replacement for petrol diesel fuel OR as a fuel offset by using it with petrol diesel fuel in any percentage you desire. DSE fuel and petrol diesel fuel are perfectly compatible.

I’d like a bit of feedback on what these guys are doing. Comments are appreciated.

I can’t even tell you how much I love freecycle.  You are saving the earth and getting free stuff!  Does it get any better than that?  I love that I can see all my stuff that I have so lovingly bought and picked out go to good homes!  If you haven’t joined your local freecycle network, I suggest checking it out!

Don’t know where to find biodiesel? Check out http://www.oliomap.com/ for a world map listing businesses specializing in auto conversion, vegetable oil distribution, and biodiesel distribution!

Definitely a worthwhile service!

Has anyone else seen the run your car on water thing? This thing looks like a total scam and it makes me sad. People hocking ebooks for $50 or more promising that you’ll be able to run your car on water. Here’s the breakdown as I see it.

• True – An internal combustion engine can be run on hydrogen. In fact, you can pump it straight into the carburetor unmodified until it backfires!
• True – hydrogen can be “made” from water. We all know this. Think back to high-school chemistry.
• False – A system exists that can convert large enough amounts of hydrogen to fuel your auto that is reliable, inexpensive, and efficient. While you CAN put together a system to do it on a very small scale (like enough to fill a ping pong ball), you can’t make it in large enough quantities to drive to work!

Hope you weren’t getting too excited. The theory is sound, but it seems like the bulk of the internet would rather exploit it for cash than try and explore its possibilities.

From a quick search on “run your car on water”. FYI – I’m not arguing against any of these site specifically. They just came up first in the search.

Run Your Car on Water | Green Tech Gazette
YouTube – Run Your Car On Water Today: STAN MEYER KILLED …
Water Car Run on WATER+Fuel. Hydrogen Save Gas=FREE ENERGY!

Okay, so I know I haven’t written for a little while, but I Have been working on this!

I bought the whole family the water bottles, and a fancy water filter, and it is working.  One of the nice side benefits of drinking the filtered water is that there aren’t half empty bottles of water all over my house… and my kid can’t pour the water out of her new bottles the same as she can with the store bought ones!

My next green step I think is to get those cloth bags at the grocery store.  They have pink ones at my kroger now, so I was thinking I should get those, but the bags are just so expensive!  I wish going green didn’t have to cost SO much money.  Maybe there is somewhere online that I can go to get some cheaper grocery bags.  I feel guilty every time I use those other bags, so I know it is the right thing to do, but I just hate to throw down that kind of cash when I am already spending 200 bucks on food!

Speaking of food prices, have you heard about the price of wheat flour going up?  This could effect everything, but for now, it sure as heck effects my sweet sweet bagels!

Well, I started reading a little about this, and I think this is a very good step to take!  Let’s get rid of those plastic water bottles!  There are so many alternatives out there, and I, for one, pledge to do my part to start filtering for the good!

A quick summary on how to convert your current vehicle to run on vegetable oil.

In order to use vegetable oil as a fuel, you need to make some minor changes to a vehicles fuel delivery system. It’s a do-it-yourself project if you like to tinker, or you can have a mechanic do it. You need to:

• Add an extra tank (in your trunk or truck bed) to hold the vegetable oil and to heat it (via the radiator) to lower the viscosity.

• Run a separate, heated fuel line to the engine.
• Install a solenoid switch so you can switch between fuel sources.
• Add a separate fuel gauge and toggle switch in the dashboard. The switch is necessary so you can run your engine on petrol-diesel during startup and in the last few minutes of driving to purge the fuel system of vegetable oil.

Here’s a more thorough vegetable oil conversion tutorial.

Some common terminology

WVO: abbreviation for Waste Vegetable Oil. Comes from fast food restaurants and other deep-fry places. It must be filtered to screen out chunks of old French fries.

SVO: abbreviation for straight vegetable oil. Comes from the grocery store, bulk food stores like Sam’s and Costco, and oil distributors.

Do you have a successful vegetable oil conversion you’d like to add to this list?

Here’s a list of some the vehicles I’ve found that have been successfully converted to run on vegetable oil. If you’re thinking of taking the plunge and have a vehicle on this list, you can breathe a little easier:

1985 Mercedes-Benz 300D
2003 Volkswagen Jetta
1986 Ford F250
1997 Mercedes-Benz E-Class
2006 Volkswagen Jetta
2001 Volkswagen Jetta
1977 Mercedes-Benz 300D
2002 Volkswagen Jetta
1982 Volkswagen Vanagon
2002 Volkswagen Jetta
2005 Dodge Ram
1998 Volkswagen Beetle
1989 Volkswagen Jetta
2002 Ford F350
2002 Volkswagen Jetta
2005 Mercedes-Benz E-Class
1984 Volvo 240
1985 Mercedes-Benz 300D
1996 Dodge Ram
1999 Chevrolet Suburban
2001 Ford F250
2002 Ford Excursion
1998 Dodge Ram
1972 Mercedes-Benz 240D
2001 Volkswagen Golf
1994 Ford F250
1997 Chevrolet 3500
2003 Volkswagen Golf
1979 Mercedes-Benz 300D
1998 Volkswagen Jetta
1996 Volkswagen Passat
1983 Mercedes-Benz 300D
1982 Volkswagen Vanagon

This post is part of a series of articles intended to address some of the popular methods DieselEarth readers have suggested to address the rising costs of driving on petroleum-based fuels.

Gas prices are sky high (over $3 in Texas for regular). So how is this affecting peoples’ driving habits? Some of the DieselEarth readers have written in with their plans to combat high gas prices, and I’d like to address some of the more popular answers:

Change Your Driving Habits – Drive Less

This is actually one of my favorite suggestions. Although the reader who wrote in meant it as a suggestion for going out less and taking fewer driving vacations, I think it should be taken further than that. In this day and age of technological communication, why are we still driving to work?

A few months before I quit my job to become a web publisher I had conversation with my boss and asked him why I came to the office everyday. I didn’t interact with customers, 95% of my work effort was done at a computer terminal, and the infrastructure for at least partial telecommunication was already in place. He didn’t really have a good answer for me.

I believe that as our capacity for communication increases with technology, we’ll start to see more individuals producing out of their homes and avoiding the high overhead costs (in both time and money) of commuting to work. This in its own right will become (at least in my mind) an alternative solution to the energy problems we’re facing.

More from this series on Changing Your Driving Habits.