I placed my order with Plantdrive and sent plans to a local welder to have my SVO (straight vegetable oil) tank manufactured. The tanks at most sites are expensive and you can't have them custom built to fit in the space you desire. The tank in my Jetta is retangular and sits in my trunk, there is some space wasted on the side of it as I didn't have it fit to the shape of the trunk. My Golf is a hatch back and I have plans that Marty developed for his Golf that will allow the tank to fit in in the cargo space on the left side of the car. It has a trapezoidal shape so there is no wasted space on the side. Tanks locally built cost about $250-300, but you have to design them. Here is what I ordered from Plantdrive: a HotFox tank heater, the TurboFyner, the Valves, the Controller & Pressure Sender, the Check Valve and the Ohm Sender and the TTVTS. What is all that? Go to www.plantdrive.com and select the type of car or truck you desire to convert to run on grease and you have a custom kit set for you to order. How do the systems work? I got this from Plantdrive:
"THE BASICS: Diesel engines are designed to run on "diesel fuel". Diesel fuel is much thinner than vegetable oil. Used cooking oil is generally thicker than new vegetable oil. To use Vegetable Oil in a A Diesel Engine as FUEL, it must be made "thinner", so that it can be moved, by the "lift pump", from tank, to filter, to injection pump, injectors, and into the combustion chamber, and burned successfully. There are two generally accepted ways to thin the vegetable oil: (A) Add a Straight Vegetable Oil (SVO) System, or (B) make "biodiesel".
DETAILS:(A) Add a "Straight Vegetable Oil"(SVO) System to the engine/vehicle fuel system. This supplies HEATED and therefore THINNED vegetable oil to the engine. The most commonly accepted, practical temperature for this is 70 degrees Celsius which is 158 degrees Fahrenheit. The SVO is heated, in our kits, by a combination of electric heating device(s), and by heat exchangers reliably and efficiently transfer heat from the hot engine coolant ("antifreeze") to the SVO. Two of these heating devices are in ALL kits ( the Vormax heated water separator/fuel filter and Vegtherm inline electric heater). The other two are OPTIONAL or DEPEND ON CLIMATE, OIL TYPE, and HOW MUCH FUEL IS USED (FUEL ECONOMY). These are the Hotfox coolant-operated in-tank heater, and the Hotplate SVO/coolant flat plate type heat exchanger.
So, you start the engine on diesel fuel, or biodiesel, run it a minute or two (perhaps twice as long in winter as in summer), then you switch a dash-mounted fuel selector switch, and STRAIGHT VEGETABLE OIL (pure 100% vegetable oil, not "biodiesel" or vegetable oil/solvent mixture) is fed to the engine from a second tank. At the end of the trip, diesel fuel (the "start/purge") fuel is selected, and a short "purge" is done, to remove vegetable oil from the injection pump and injectors before the engine is shut down for longer periods (e.g. more than an hour, in warm weather, more than half an hour in cold weather). "
My kit has one difference from this description in that it will have the "VO controller" which is fully automatic. I get in the car turn the key and when the system is hot it will switch to SVO, when I shut it off the car will run a few seconds longer as I walk away allowing it to purge. Anyone may drive it without having to remember to purge.
Oil and sun are everywhere. The sun is easy to obtain, set up a solar array and you are set to go. Grease is a little more difficult to obtain, but it is free and easy to filter. To find grease you need to find a restrauant that has fried food. Not so difficult in the USA. Drive around in back and check for a large container. Most large establishments like McDonalds have contracts to have the grease picked up on a regular basis. it is hard to get their grease. Best thing to do is find a locally owned restrauant and buy dinner. After eating ask what they do with their grease and see if you can obtain some. Talk about your project and maybe they will let you have some free grease. I found two sources for grease and that is enough for the 2 cars that Marty and I have converted plus the cars we are working on.
Used vegetable has to be filtered or run through a centrifuge to get the water and contanaments out in order to get clean grease to use a fuel. I have been filtering using a two tank system. The first tank is a setteling tank that has a 5 gallon bucket with a long tube. I pour used grease in the bucket and as it enters the tank it goes in the long tube and into the bottom pushing clean oil up and out a tube into a second barrel where it passes through a 5 micron filter bag into the second barrel. I apply some heat to the first barrel to remove water and make it possible to filter in cold weather. To apply heat I wrap the barrel with heat tape that is sued to remove ice from a roof. It works well and heats the oil to 100 degrees. If this seems difficult it is. Which is why Marty and I are building a centrifuge. The best description on how a centrifuge works is at www/simplecentrifuge.com, click on the link that on the left that says "videos" or go to this link: http://www.simplecentrifuge.com/video/how_it_works.wmv
Best way to get oil is to find another person that is doing it and work together to get your oil and process it. A great place to read about filtering is at http://biodiesel.infopop.cc/eve/forums/a/cfrm/f/898605551. You can read about processing oil and post questions if you need help.
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