Portland Glass

Too Many Jugs! (veggie oil collection woes)

I collect used Vegetable oil. It's becoming a habit. Through the summer, one veggie oil source provides the oil for me in nice little 5 gallon jugs (the ones the oil comes in). Very convenient for hauling them out and loading them in the van, driving away. And I can re-use them for my other source - who uses a barrel. I pump oil into empty jugs and load them up, haul them off. My problem - I keep on getting more and more! All I need is at most a dozen to get me through the winter. I bring home 2-3 / week. It's only for 5-6 months, but still, thats 40 to 60 jugs! And you google it... nothing.

Is this one of the dark underbelly parts of grease collection?

Do fellow greasers send this stuff on to the landfill?

That bothers me.

So much that I've been doing research.

My early assessments:

Recycling programs will only take these jugs if they're full, or if they've been thoroughly cleaned. Mine are neither - and the work to get them into one of those states is prohibitive. Recycling is out.

Reusing them - not so useful - there's only so many uses for 5 gallon number 2 oil and food encrusted jugs. Any ideas? none here.

And now, I've come across a company who can take plastics (amongst other things), apply heat in a controlled environment, and get petroleum. I'm going to try them. They said they'd make a trial of taking my plastics. I'm still not quite convinced it's the best treatment - but: I get rid of the jugs, and someone else is happy to have them and is actually going to make a little bit of money off them (they sell the petroleum they generate). I'll update this after I actually take them some jugs and see the facility.

luck, and diatomaceous earth

It began on Thursday. My dad (visiting Oregon from Greeley, CO) helped me modify a 10-ft bamboo pole into an effective crab trap tosser. We visited Netarts (Happy Camp Hideaway) and started flinging this thing (a butterfly trap) into the bay and began pulling in crab (lots and lots of tossers, and, for the weekend, 5 keepers - one of them took a chunk off my dad's finger). We were doing at least as well as the guys in the boats with the big baskets were. Then Saturday night I kicked butt in dirty clubs (some silly card game my folks are into). We made it there and back to Portland using a half tank of veggie oil, and the Suburban did just fine! (and so did the boys!) Also, I had left the van on WVO accidentally (rather than switching it to diesel), and was concerned about running the battery down getting it started again - but I left the heater lines on an extra long time, and the thing turned over faster than ever!

Then on Monday, I participated in the Mississippi Pizza Spelling Bee! For the first time. And went head to head with a good friend, my mother, and a handful of spellers. Having had 3 pints of Jubel Ale - I was a little surprised to find myself in the final round with a spelling veteran. After several attempts at spelling impossible words - we worked our way backwards into an easier category, he missed his, and I got "milquetoast". It's a pitiful word to win on, but there you have it. Especially when I really should have won with "kieselguhr" (which means: diatomaceous earth). I forgot about the H near the end... Still wobbly with the Jubel, I collected my prizes (tootsie roll pop, hug from grandfather, spelling bee t-shirt, photo on the wall and $10 gift certificate - other contestants merely got a dumdum and a hug from grandfather). As I ambled home, feeling the smuggest guy on Mississippi for a moment.

Tuesday came. The checking account (unmonitored for a moment) dipped too too low incurring nasty fees (no returned checks - and I remedied that situation today), and I lost horribly in dirty clubs. Though we did take the Suburban up to Sauvie Island for a little Pumpkin Patch experience - and the kids had fun, no one got hurt, AND it took all of 3 seconds for both the boys to pick out a pumpkin and we hopped right back on the hayride and hauled it back to the barn - which was perfect. So, not ALL bad luck, but I had been hopeful for a trend. Of course, now we've got the miners being rescued, the gulf is being cleaned more than polluted (maybe?), and the dow is looking positive. So, whatayagoingtado?

Success with the Vanagon on WVO!

Yes, we took it on a small trip this weekend - 150 miles round trip - burned through half a tank of veggie (6 plus gallons).  The trip wasn't quite seamless, but pretty good! It seems that the tank selector valve doesn't always switch. I'm not sure why, and I'm not sure if I fixed it. There was an intermittent open circuit that I temporarily cinched down 20 miles into the trip. One of my connectors was loose - I hadn't crimped it properly (apparently) - so I was able to remedy that quickly and insulate it with some bandaging tape (handy!).

Other things to look into:

being able to switch the return line into the diesel tank - handy if you just want to run on diesel. Otherwise, you get about 4 mpg.

hooking up the tank heater for 12vDC. We didn't need it on this trip - and we had some long stops (3+ hrs at a party on Saturday, 2+ hrs at church on Sunday). But my guess is that when it runs, the hot fuel brings a little heat into the tank, and also, the tank doesn't need to be particularly hot as the main heating is done with the filter heater and then the injector line heaters. It just needs to flow fairly well out of the main tank. But the auxiliary pump helps that process as well.

I haven't found out the ideal distance for a good purge - 2 blocks isn't long enough (1/10 of a mile), and 5 city blocks is just a little too long (1/4 mile). It purges quick though. And that's pretty nice.

I need to drill a hole in the back end to run the line - it brings in fumes to have the engine hatch cracked open. I was able to block it better with a blanket - so maybe just use some foam strips to better seal it.

Vanagon successfully transitioned to SVO! (again)

'83 Vanagon with a '84 diesel Quantum engine (1.6L). My dad talked me into using the "big" (11 gallons) tank for veggie and the small (6 gal.) for diesel. The small tank is a metal marine tank I picked up on craigslist. The diesel tank will be just for purging when we're planning on not driving it again shortly. The big tank has a heater on it (runs on 115VAC), and after 90 minutes of heating I started it up - it was a little ragged (possibly hadn't purged it well enough on an earlier test), but smoothed out shortly. You feel a loss in power (really, you can sink lower), and I believe you experience lower MPG. But the smell is great! (good fried food) and the cost is excellent (though there's much labor involved). And it was a dizzy dance to work out all the electrical and plumbing.

Still to do on the van - a remote thermometer for the big tank, and reconfigure the diesel tank so it fits in more snug and doesn't keep the engine hatch open.

So, that's checked off (almost completely). But as to the other things I intended to do yesterday - none of them got any attention. Not today either. Maybe tomorrow. Tomorrow is for working on glass. 2 patterns to prepare, windows to fix, and concepts to hammer out. My list of things to do - only gets bigger. Even though it feels great to cross one off and feel like I did it well - like that hydra Hercules fought - knock one off - 2 more crop up to replace it. Maybe I should dwell on that a little...