Brew Your Own Auto Fuel For 41 Cents A Gallon

From Slashdot: Brew Your Own Auto Fuel For 41 Cents A Gallon

Iphtashu Fitz writes “Damon Toal-Rossi of Iowa City, Iowa had enough of the high price of gaso­line, so it did­n’t take too much for his friend to talk him into switch­ing to biodiesel, an alter­na­tive fuel based on soy or veg­etable oil. But after a few months of dri­ving 10 miles to a biodiesel fuel sta­tion he decid­ed it was time to start brew­ing his own. It did­n’t take him long to find a recipe for biodiesel, and with used cook­ing oil that he gets for free from a near­by restau­rant, he fig­ures he’s now get­ting 44 miles per gal­lon out of his diesel pow­ered VW Golf and only pay­ing 41 cents a gal­lon. According to the National Biodiesel Board the num­ber of biodiesel sta­tions in the US rose by 50% last year (to a whop­ping 200). The pres­i­dent of the American Soybean Association claims biodiesel has almost the same amount of ener­gy as petroleum-based diesel, but cleans an engine’s fuel injec­tors and cuts down on the num­ber of required oil changes. Perhaps these are some of the rea­sons why diesel pow­ered cars are mak­ing a come­back in the US.” 

I saw the head­line in my RSS aggre­ga­tor and thought: “Brew my own gas for 41 cents a gal­lon? That’s a hel­lu­va lot bet­ter than $2.36! The method is prob­a­bly a wild­ly geeky tech­nique requir­ing chem­istry skills and gad­getry I don’t yet under­stand, but hell, for that kind of sav­ings, I’ll learn.”

The irony of it is this: It’s not that geeky, and the gad­getry isn’t very advanced. I could do it… But I dri­ve a Mustang, a car whose fuel-injected high-performance engine requries high-octane unlead­ed, not diesel.