Collecting Restaurant Biodiesel - Clean or Dirty?

HISTORY

Feldmarschall Erwin Rommel of Hitler's Afrika Panzerkorps ran his diesel engine army tanks on grease from his mobile kitchens. This was done in desperation due to fuel shortages he suffered from unreliable fuel shipments.

While historically intriguing, I don't recommend you do this with your diesel car.

DIRTY OR CLEAN SOURCE?

I meet and talk with loads of people who are excited about biodiesel because they saw it in the news. They want to try it. Before you get started, the first stage is being able to determine raw biodiesel feedstock from a "pure" source.

When I first decided to get going with biodiesel, I looked around for grease dumpsters and found two kinds.

* "Garbage" grease dumpsters - This kind of grease is unusable. This goo is filled with everything ranging from grease to food slops and everything else they felt like throwing in there. Too much extraneous food and other rotten content - much of which will is smelly and will cause your fuel to spoil later on. Stay away from this.

How to tell if its too garbagey? Look for food chunks and other crap floating on the surface.

* "Pure" grease dumpsters - This is the kind of grease you're looking for. I find that restaurants with a limited range of fried foods on the menu are the target. These include Chinese restaurants and sushi restaurants, or places where they serve French fries as the only fried item on the menu. While their vegetable oil is contaminated, the amounts of contaminants are few enough to allow relatively easy filtration.

How to tell if its too garbagey? An absence of the above-mentioned food chunks and other crap floating on the surface.

MORE INFO

Learn more about biodiesel by seeing my various articles about biodiesel.

In the mean time...

Have fun!

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