Fuel for thought: Vegetable oil powers Benz

By Aaron Lee

Published: November 17, 2008

Stephen Bradford knew he would be commuting hundreds of miles a week when he started classes at the University of Virginia this semester.

So, the part-time student converted his 1985 Mercedes-Benz 300 to run on a combination of vegetable oil and diesel.
Diesel alone was getting Bradford roughly 25 miles to the gallon. And while his car still uses some diesel when it starts, it is burning veggie oil 90 percent of the time at a rate of 20 mpg. This helps lessen the financial burden of traveling between Northern Virginia, Harrisonburg and Charlottesville.
“I did it for the financial incentive and environmental concerns,” Bradford said.
It took Bradford and a relative one September weekend to install the $950 kit he bought from a company called Greasecar. And while the conversion was a first for both, Bradford said it was relatively easy.

And because of the car’s age, and because it has 300,000 miles on it, Bradford said he wasn’t nervous about doing the work himself.
“No one is going to shed a tear when it stops running,” he said of the car. “I’m not putting too much on the table by converting this machine.”
And, he adds, “I got to know my car a little more intimately.”
And while he doesn’t think veggie-converting cars will catch wildfire with other students, it didn’t take long this semester before he met another convert — Keith Williams.
Williams is an assistant physics professor at UVa who in June had professional mechanics veggie-convert his diesel 2005 Volkswagen Jetta. In hindsight he would have done the work himself after seeing how simple the installation — done in a day — looked.
“It’s amazing that everybody isn’t doing this, it’s so easy,” Williams said.

The hard part is dealing with the container stacks of used veggie oil slowly taking over his apartment.
“Clearly, I’ve got some wealth to spread,” he said. “I would really like to get this stuff out of my life.”
However, on the mileage side of things, his new dual system is getting roughly the same mileage as if he was only running on diesel — upward of 40 mpg.
Williams gets his oil from a local Chinese restaurant. He then runs the oil through a filtration system before using it in his car.
And his enthusiasm for the conversion has spread to others.
Rebecca White, UVa’s director of parking and transportation, said she can see possibilities for a project to get one of the university’s diesel vehicles converted to veggie oil.

UVa already runs its vehicles and fleet of buses on a biodiesel blend.
White, who owns two vehicles that she runs on biodiesel, also is thinking about making the conversion herself.
Williams said a group that began meeting on Grounds recently is talking about how to raise even more interest in the veggie fuel he said is kinder to the environment than diesel or gasoline. He noted that the former waste product burns without a distinctive smell.

“I’ve had it running ... and was disappointed to not have it smell like Chinese food,” Williams said. “However, my apartment does smell like Chinese food because I have all this oil sitting around.”