Vegetable Oil Road Trip

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I intend for this blog to not only be a forum for vegetable oil and alternative fuels, but also for traveling and camping in general. To this end, here is my first experimentation with ultralight camping tools…

Growing up in New Mexico, I loved hiking, camping, and backpacking. Unfortunately, this is something I haven’t kept up in the intervening (let’s just say “several”) years. So, I’m trying to get back into backpacking. In looking at the modern world of backpacking, I found a cool sub-genre called ultralight backpacking. The ultralight backpackers’ philosophy is essentially that less is more. If you carry less, you can walk further. They figure out how to do just as camping with less actual objects in their packs.

So far so good, right? Here’s where my interest really gets piqued: most ultralight backpackers’ equipment is made by hand, including stoves, tents, and even (gasp) backpacks. This defninitely triggers the hobbyist tendencies in me, so I’m going to explore this stuff. They are making equipment from empty cans and tarps that easily rival the most expensive equpiment out there!

Well, since stoves = fire, and therefore the greatest chance for personal harm, that’s where I decided to start.

I have been eyeing the excellent looking (and highly recommended) penny alcohol and penny wood stoves created by Mark Jurey for quite some time, so I decided to attempt to build the easier wood stove first.

Modifications
After looking at the photos and descriptions of the penny wood stove, I chose to make a small adjustment – in the penny wood stove, Mark cuts the top ring of the can and forms the sheet metal to hold the stakes. I realize that he does it to save weight and space (his stove fits inside his cooking pot- very clever), but I don’t think the (small) weight savings are worth it, for a few reasons:

1. It looks like this step decreases structural integrity of the stove.
2. This step increases the complexity of the build and chances of failure
3. I’m pretty sure that cut metal = even more sharp surfaces that can cut me and my equipment.
4. I’m lazy and I don’t own a pair of tin snips. Why should I? Tin snips aren’t power tools.

Chances are, I’ll end up buying a pair of tin snips and eating my words on this, but I’m anxious to make fire, so let’s proceed, shall we?

Update: yeah, I’m probably going to cut the ring off, to make the thing shorter – Mark really does know what he’s doing…

Instructions for making my modified penny wood stove:

Ingredients:
1 Large can of tomatoes, emptied (28 oz) – I use one of those new-fangled can openers that cut from the side, to decrease the number of sharp edges on the thing…

3 Tent stakes (from your tent, to save room, weight and space)

1 Center punch (you can substitute a nail)

1 Hammer or mallet

1 Power drill (yay for power tools!)

1/8″ bit

1/4″ bit

1 Variable diameter bit (great for drilling larger holes in sheet metal)

1 Circular file (for removing sharp edges and metal burrs)

1 Pair of safety glasses

Note: Before drilling any holes, use the center punch (or nail) and hammer to make a dent where you want to drill. This keeps the drill from “walking” and going places it shouldn’t (such as your hand).

Note (2): Wear eye protection!

Note (3): Despite my enthusiasm for power tools, remember that they are very dangerous, know proper technique, and never use them when you’re tired or under the influence of chemicals.

Note (4): Theses instructions are for informational purposes, and are only here to document what I did last night – if you follow in my footsteps and hurt yourself, burn down a forest, or singe your pinky finger, I accept absolutely no blame. Please, please, please be careful and don’t hurt yourself or others!

Steps:

1. Drill six 1/2″ holes in the side wall of the can – 3 in the top and 3 in the bottom, in pairs, each pair separated by 120 degrees.
2. I used the file to bend the upper (near the opening of the can) holes so from the outside, the opening bends downward, and I bent the lower holes so the outeside opening bends upward. These holes are where the tent stake will pass.
3. Drill a 1/4″ hole into the base of the can, inline with each of the 3 pairs of 1/2″ holes.
4. Make sure your tent stake can pass through the 1/4″ hole and each 1/2″ hole, and end up poking out the top of the can (this may take some forcing the first few times, carefuly bend the can to allow the stake to pass. Remove the stakes before continuing.
5. Drill six 3/16″ holes between the 1/2″ holes, and bend the upper 3/16″ holes to match the upper 1/2″ holes. The upper holes will act as air jets to help promote combustion. There should now be 6 holes in the upper part of the side wall and 6 holes in the lower part of the side wall, and 3 holes in the can’s base.
6. Drill about 70 1/8″ holes into the base of the can.
7. Using the metal file, remove all those sharp pointy bits you just created in your can.

You now have a can with 85 holes in it.

Insert the stakes (you removed them between steps 4 and 5, right?), go outside, place a pot with water on there, and test it out!

Testing
I took a small crumpled piece of newspaper and put it in the bottom of the stove, followed by a few broken pieces of wood (nothing resembling a good campfire), lit the paper by inserting a lighter into a lower hole, and stood back (it was a breezy night).

Very quickly, the sticks lit up and began burning quite well! After the paper died down, I was amazed at how ferociously the little bit of wood that I had in there burned! This photo shows the fire well into the burn, and obviously needing a wind shield (the next part of the project).

All in all, it burned itself out in about 5 minutes – most websites I’ve seen recommend loosely packing the can so it’s almost full of fuel before lighting to get a long burn.

Next up: a wind shield and a more prolonged test of the stove.

After that, I’m going to attempt to build the alcohol stove (for use when there is no dry fuel available)

I’ve seen speculation along these lines several times in the past, but it looks like researchers at MIT are looking more seriously at algae-produced vegetable oil for use as a fuel (either straight or refined into biodiesel).

Here’s the deal: the best crop for producing vegetable oil is palm (palm and palm kernel oil) which produces about 600 gallons per acre per year, not too shabby, right?

Well, algae is a weed, and grows anywhere there is water, CO2, sunlight, and it grows extremely quickly. It grows so quickly that researchers estimate that they could produce as much as 10,000 to 20,000 gallons of oil per acre per year.

If true, this would pretty much blow any arguments that vegetable oil is not a viable source of fuel out the window.

link

We have our first sponsors for the trip!

A vegetable oil donation, parts for the car, an individual sponsor, and a corporate sponsor.

I hope all of you had a great Christmas, Channukah, or whatever else… and a Happy New Year!

I’m in New Mexico visiting family and friends for the holidays.

Merry Xmas, Happy Chanukah, Happy New Year, everyone!

Lately, I’ve not been posting that quickly because there has been a distraction a-brewing: vegetableoilroadtrip.com. There is a link over on the right sidebar —>

This is the new homepage for our road trip. Please take a look around and tell me what you think…

Google just released a new feature for Google Maps that allows you to choose multiple destinations. I have personally been wishing fervently for exactly this new feature (thanks, guys!).

So, using the new feature, I was able to get a good handle on exactly how far a route we’re talking about: 5,955 miles, with a combined driving time of about 3 days, 22 hours. Luckily, this is mostly broken up in 3 to 4 hour chunks. Unfortunately, I count 4 chunks of driving that are over the 8-hour range.

They are:

• From Savannah, GA to New Orleans, LA (10 hours)
• From New Orleans, LA to Austin, TX (8.5 hours)
• From Austin, TX to El Paso, TX (8.5 hours)
• From Las Vegas, NV to San Francisco, CA (8.5 hours)

Any ideas for breaking these up? I’m trying to make this a fun trip, and 8+ hour drives aren’t my idea of fun.

Update:
I just re-did the map, with a few additions (Boston, Lake Charles, Pensacola, and Dallas), and the new total is about 6400 miles. I think I’ll change my engine oil in Albuquerque…

How this whole thing works.
I realize that I haven’t spent any time explaining why or how I am able to burn vegetable oil in my diesel car – I keep getting questions on how this works, so here’s my very non-technical explanation. With pictures.

Here’s the deal:
Diesel engines will burn almost anything that is liquid and contains carbon and hydrogen.
The first diesel engine (displayed by Rudolph Diesel at the Paris world fair) ran on Peanut Oil, so vegetable oils have always been a part of the diesel engine’s heritage.

Modern diesel engines are designed to run on petroleum fuel (A.K.A.: diesel fuel), but kerosene and other heavy fuel oils will also work well. Compared to vegetable oils, petroleum fuels are not very viscous, so to use vegetable oil in a diesel engine you either have to modify the engine (expensive) or make the oil less viscous (cheap). There are two easy ways to get vegetable oil to be less viscous: additives and heat.

Additives cost money (and are usually petroleum products), but diesel engines produce plenty of extra heat for free!

Vegetable oil gets to around the same viscosity as petroleum fuels when it is heated to about 120F (50C). So, to get vegetable oil to work in a modern diesel engine, all you need to do is heat it before it enters the engine. To do this, there is a kit installed in the car that reroutes the coolant so I can warm up the vegetable oil in my trunk:

My car starts on petroleum diesel, and when the engine reaches it’s normal operating temperature (coolant temperature of ~80C), I switch to the vegetable oil tank using a switch by my left knee. The switch stops the diesel fuel and allows vegetable oil to flow into the engine, where it burns just like any other fuel. The only thing I notice is that the engine gets quieter and people outside my car will notice that my exhaust smells of fried foods.

Here’s how things look when I first start the car:

And here is how things look when I switch to vegetable oil:

Stopping the engine is a similar process. I don’t want to leave vegetable oil in the fuel lines (low temperatures could cause the oil to solidify – this would be bad), so I purge the lines for about 20 seconds with petroleum diesel before shutting off the engine. All this takes is a little forethought. I’m now used to judging about 20 seconds before I get out of the car, so I purge the lines and get the engine ready for starting with clear lines the next time I hop in the driver’s seat.

Here’s what purge mode looks like before I switch back to diesel mode and turn the engine off:

I swear, this is the last post about filtering for a long while. I know these posts are too technical, but I want to show proof that this thing works. My next few posts will be about building camping stoves.

Here are some pictures of the rig in action.

The first image is looking at the rear of the car – you can see the 5 gallon jug of oil, the pump, and hoses running everywhere.

The second image is looking directly down into the car’s trunk. You can see the veggie oil tank uncovered, with the discharge handle feeding oil into the tank.

In these pictures, the haze you see is from the oil – apparently the oil became a little foamy as it passed through the filter and pump. As the foam settles in the tank, it releases a little oil mist, which you can see as haze in these pictures.

In the end, we pumped roughly 3 gallons in about 10-12 minutes. No records were broken by any means, it was pretty cold that night, and I expect to do most of my pumping in warmer weather, so that might speed things up. In the mean time, I’m considering adding a second filter in parallel to speed things up. The problem is that more filters=more weight and more room needed. If anyone has suggestions, feel free to leave me a comment!

So, here is the list of people and places we’re currently planning on visiting around the country (with approximate dates):

• Cleveland, Ohio to see Jen (3/27)
• Boston, Massachusetts to hang out and eat at the hospital (3/29)
• New Haven, Connecticut to hang out with Betsy (4/2)
• Dover, New Jersey to see Harry (4/5)
• I’ll fly to Austin for the weekend for Carrie’s wedding
• New York, New York to see C. in the Village (4/10)
• D.C. to see Angela and N. (4/13)
• Norfolk, Virginia to see Dirk (4/17)
• Raleigh, North Carolina to visit O. (4/20)
• Charleston, South Carolina to visit Karen’s brother (4/23)
• Savannah, Georgia to visit Lynn (4/24)
• Someplace on the gulf coast in Florida for a few days of beach (4/26)
• New Orleans, Louisiana to see a place I’ve never been (4/28)
• Lake Charles, Louisiana to eat etouffe and gumbo with Tyler’s family (4/30)
• Austin, Texas to visit Carrie (again!) (5/1)
• Dallas, Texas to visit family (5/3)
• El Paso, Texas to eat some good Mexican food (5/4)
• Albuquerque, New Mexico to visit Corina, Erik, and many more people (5/5)
• Flagstaff, Arizona to see the Grand Canyon (5/11)
• Las Vegas, Nevada to… well do whatever one does in Las Vegas (5/15)
• San Francisco, California and surrounding areas to drink wine and visit with Rita, Bryan, Sarah, Anna, and many many more people (5/17)
• A week of camping up the Northern California Coast to Oregon and Portland will finish off the trip on 5/31!

So, all my friends, tell me if these dates are good, bad, or indifferent. And in places where I don’t have someplace to stay, do you have a friend with a comfortable couch?

I can’t wait to see you all!

Once you build a portable filter like this, you quickly realize that the filter housing holds a lot of oil. Much of that oil is now on my basement floor.

I experimented with plastic bags and rubber bands to get the leaking under control, but then I realized that I should engineer my way out of this problem.

After really looking at the thing, I realized that the discharge hose isn’t a problem because the nozzle handle acts as a valve, so the system doesn’t leak out the discharge nozzle.

The suction strainer is a different situation entirely, that’s where all the oil was coming from! So, I cut off the discharge strainer and used garden hose connectors to temporarily reconnect it when needed. When not in use, the suction strainer goes in a zip-lock bag and I have an end cap for the suction hose.

Now, I no longer have oil slicks everywhere. When not in use, the system is oil-tight! The next step is to put it into a case for transport.