After the conversion: The search for vegetable-oil motor fuel

For those who have converted their vehicles to vegetable oil, finding sources of fuel is a quest that often reflects who they are and what they do for a living


NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE
Sunday, Jul 23, 2006,Page 12


The quest for secondhand fryer oil to use as a motor fuel sometimes turns on the question of whom you know. But as some restaurant owners and managers have discovered, it is also a question of who you are and what you do for a living.

Take David Selig, the 41-year-old owner of five restaurants in Brooklyn and Manhattan. Cooking flash-fried rice balls, lotus-root chips and vegetarian meatballs, his kitchens produce as much as 266 liters of waste oil each week -- sometimes more than twice the amount needed to run the Dodge Sprinter diesel van that Selig uses in his restaurant and catering businesses.

Selig, who has a four-restaurant chain called Rice and a separate establishment featuring Basque cuisine called N (pronounced enya), had a modified Greasecar conversion kit installed in the van last month.

Since then, he has not had to refill the diesel tank -- only the separate vegetable oil supply -- in nearly 1,600km of New York City driving.

Saving money by using oil as a fuel that had previously been a disposal problem is only part of the reason Selig said he was happy to make the switch.

"It addresses a problem I think the restaurant business has had for a long time," he said.

"We need to be more intelligent about dealing with the waste that we generate. Cost and waste make it hard to survive in this business, and I was motivated to do something about it," he added.

Selig said he had also tried to find gardeners who could use his vegetable waste as compost.

Even a restaurant owner not feeling motivated to run his own car with oil from the deep-fat fryer can turn that waste into a business advantage. Tim Bryant, who runs Marlintini's Grill in Blue Hill, Maine, gives all of his waste oil to Carsten Steenberg from nearby Penobscot. Steenberg uses the oil in his 2006 Volkswagen Jetta diesel.

In return, Steenberg displays large magnetic advertising signs on the front doors of his car.

"It was a no-brainer," Bryant said. "He drives all over with the name of our restaurant on his car."

Steenberg, a 46-year-old business consultant, said he was aware that by installing a parallel fuel system in a new car he might be jeopardizing at least a portion of the automaker's warranty.

"But I have no reservations," he said. "I had the car converted when it was one week old, and it has 7,300 miles [11,680km] on it, all driven on vegetable oil after the first 1,000 miles [1,600km]. It's scary how perfect the setup has been."

Baruch Ben-Yehudah, who runs Everlasting Life, a health food restaurant in Capitol Heights, Maryland, fills his 1991 Mercedes-Benz with oil that had been used to fry tofu, potatoes and vegetable patties.

"It's not just the money," he said. "I did it because I saw what we were doing to the environment and did not want my children to see their father contributing to the problem."

And he added: "I believe in being energy independent. I do not want to give someone else power over my life."