Two guys, a girl and their veggie mobile

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Ripped from the pages of the Charlottesville Daily Progress, which means that the story probably isn't true. Whatever. Here's the article anyway.

Two guys, a girl and their veggie mobile

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Recently, three young pioneers from Albemarle County attempted to cross the nation powered largely by used vegetable oil. The belly of the beast that Scott Wilcox and siblings Luke and Emily Scruby were riding is housed within the framework of a 1985 Thomas International diesel-powered school bus.
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Scruby, a junior mechanical engineering student at the University of Virginia, handled the conversion and other technical matters. He said equipping a bus takes a lot more work than outfitting a car. Scruby already had converted his own automobile to run on vegetable oil.
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“If you’re handy and can do the work yourself, you could spend as little as $150 for parts. The onboard filtration system on the bus made it a lot more expensive. We had to get a pretty significant industrial-type pump and a lot of pipes, fittings, hoses and stuff like that.

“In total, we spent about $900 just in parts for the conversion. Luckily we’ve gotten some funding from the mechanical engineering department at UVa. They’re kind of interested in the project.
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[mike_c]

1. the article is largely BS...

...that manages to suggest that biodiesel is only marginally possible, fraught with problems, etc. In fact, it's anything but. Several of my friends use biodiesel exclusively, and have driven hundreds of thousands of miles on biodiesel. Biodiesel is sold commercially in my community. It is a very viable technology with the potential to dramatically reduce dependence upon fossil fuels.

[XemaSab]

4. I miss the cars in Arcata

that smell like tempura.

:-(

[mike_c]

7. or peanut butter....

:hi:

[Massacure]

5. They didn't use biodiesel. They used straight vegitable oil.

Depending on what was cooked in it, I can see why it caused problems.

[thegreatwildebeest]

6. There are problems...

It DOES have problems, and not all of the criticisms of biodiesel come from anti-environment folks or oil companies. There's the issue of using food to fuel cars, how much of the nations land must be used to grow fuel (such a situation has led to deforestation in Brazil due to increased biodiesel demands etc), and the costs in comparison to other fuel alternatives and conservation techniques.

[whatelseisnew]

2. Willie Nelson's promoting biodiesel

http://www.wnbiodiesel.com/

Biodiesel

We sell Biodiesel, which is the name of a clean burning, renewable diesel fuel replacement made from vegetable oils or animal fats. The methyl ester of vegetable oil or what we now call Biodiesel is very similar to the petrochemical based diesel fuel that it replaces, so does not require any vehicle or storage modifications.  

The main benefits derived from using Biodiesel come from the reduction in tail pipe emissions and the diesel fuel consumer can now ensure that their fuel money stays in America rather than going overseas.

[gaia_gardener]

3. Well, clearly they're using

oil straight from the fryer, otherwise it wouldn't need to be filtered. So that vehicle cut out the processing plant.

I've seen bioWillie being sold and my ILs were planning on using it in their diesel car when they drove through TX, but I'm not sure if they did.