August 7, 2008

How You Can Run Your Diesel On.. Used Cooking Oil

Those driving diesel powered vehicles have been hit the hardest by the recent surge in gas prices. In many parts of the U.S., it's not uncommon to see a whole dollar difference in the price of unleaded gasoline and diesel fuel. Gasoline users have hybrids, even water powered cars, but what alternative exists for diesel engines? You can run your diesel on used vegetable oil. How's that for a simple, elegant solution?

Many people are unaware that the diesel engine was originally designed to run on vegetable oil, not petroleum. Rudolf Diesel, a Bavarian engineer came up with the idea for an internal combustion engine using vegetable oil to support what was primarily an agriculture based society in the late 1800s. Soon after it's invention, however, a number of factors led to the replacement of vegetable oil with petroleum based diesel as the primary fuel. With the price of petroleum at steady and manageable levels, the vegetable oil based engine was left behind. Fast forward to 2008, where a barrel of crude oil fetches $140.

Many vegetable oils posses remarkably similar properties to diesel fuel, with one major exception. Vegetable oil has a significantly higher viscosity that diesel fuel, meaning that it is thicker. While this alone does not mean that it is not a viable fuel source, virtually every modern diesel engine is made to use a much less viscous fuel for combustion. Thus, modern diesel engines are not designed to use vegetable oil as fuel- without some additional treatment, that is.

The way engineers have gotten around this issue is rather ingenious. As you know, when a liquid is heated, it's viscosity decreases. That is, it thins out. The same holds true to vegetable oil. Modern systems that use vegetable oil as fuel simply heat the vegetable oil in the tank or fuel lines before it is injected into the engine. This can be accomplished a few different ways, but the most common is to start your engine using petroleum based diesel fuel for just enough time to heat the vegetable oil up. When at the proper temperature, the engine automatically switches to the vegetable oil as fuel. Upon turning the car off, the engine will momentarily switch back to standard diesel to clear the fuel lines of vegetable oil, readying your vehicle for next time.

Perhaps the best part of running your diesel on vegetable oil is the cost of the fuel. While you will spend around $1000 to install one of these systems, the oil can many times be obtained at no cost. Think about it. Restaurants have to pay companies to haul away all their used cooking oil, because of the space it takes up and the cost of disposal. If you're offering to remove it for free, they would be crazy to not take you up. After that, it's only a matter of running the oil through a simple filter, and you're ready to run your diesel on vegetable oil.

There are many ways to save on energy, and most have their merits. This technique, however has the power to almost completely eliminate the cost of fuel for your diesel engine. Many people have already begun to take advantage of this, and many more surely will.

Article by Water Car Facts

Filed under Water Car by Water Car and Driver

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August 3, 2008

Can You Really Run Your Car On Water?

With each new day, it seems as if gas prices are reaching new record levels. Not surprisingly, a huge demand for ways to save on this precious commodity has arisen in recent years. Many techniques claim to save you big money on gas, but let's be serious for a moment- how much of a difference is 4 cents a gallon in savings by cleaning out your trunk going to make? You get my point. There is, however, an established but not well known technology available that saves you up to 60% on your fill ups. Yes, you can run your car on water.

Ok, so it's not quite as simple as that. The technology behind running your car on water has been around for decades and has actually been used for heavy machinery with some regularity in the past. Originally patented over 90 years ago, a few ingenious people have recently engineered a simple way for the average driver to manufacture and install one of these systems on a car. Why it has taken so long to bring to the public at large remains somewhat of a mystery, but when you look at the record profits oil companies are currently enjoying, it may become a bit more obvious.

Running your car on water works on a system that utilizes energy already being produced by our engine- energy that normally goes to waste. As you may know, as your engine chugs along, through the use of an alternator, your battery is constantly being recharged. Your engine produces much more energy than is necessary to recharge your battery, however, and most of that wasted energy is lost.

Through a process called electrolysis, you run electrical current from your battery through a mixture containing water and some commonly available household chemicals, creating a gas called "Brown's Gas." Brown's Gas, also known as HHO gas or Hydroxy, burns very cleanly and provides a huge amount of energy. You can then make some minor modifications to your engine and start supplementing it with this newly produced HHO gas, thus using less gasoline. This may sound a bit intimidating, but with proper instruction, the average person usually completes one of these conversions in a day or so and for minimal cost.

Yes, you can run your car on water. Not only is it a much cleaner alternative to 100% gasoline fed engines, but it can save you a tremendous amount on your fuel bill. It will be truly exciting to pay attention to this technology as it may very well pave the way to independence from foreign oil supplies. I encourage you to strongly consider this as a way to declare your independence.

Check out these reviews of the current best selling HHO conversion guides.