The county of Westchester has 3,500 restaurants which are providing the cooking oil for the county’s vehicles. The county is even taking used cooking oil from places such as homeless shelters. Not only is cooking oil cleaner and minimizes fuel use, it is also saving the restaurants money. Restaurants often have to pay private companies to take their used oil, running upwards up $22 per 5 gallons of oil. Restaurants have started using more oil recently due to trans fat bans and requirements to change oil more often.
10,000 gallons of cooking oil correlates to $25,000 in savings for the county of Westchester. It costs the county $4,500 per vehicle to enable vehicles to run on strictly cooking oil, and minimal costs to enable vehicles to run on a combo fuel. In order to make the cooking oil valuable fuel, it must be processed. The county states that it only cost about $1,000 per unit for processing. Running the vehicles on cooking oil will save taxpayers money, save restaurants money and help to save the environment, a true potential win-win-win.
I would love to read how this used oil works in the cars? I think that this is a great idea and would love to read more of the pros and cons of it.
it is always the simplest ideas that actually do real good, and have a genuine beneficial effect on our surroundings. Excellent work!
It is actually fairly simple. The cooking oil that they use is very similar molecularly to diesel fuel, which is why it can be mixed with diesel and burned without much of a problem. The differences (which equate to burning temperatures and heat produced) make the changes necessary. It also burns more cleanly, which is a plus!!
Who else looked at that photo and felt their arteries clogging? Was it just me??
Way to go Westchester! Now we just need the rest of the country to catch up and realize we need to start doing something proactive to fix our situation!!