LIBERTY Cooking oil goes from food to fuel

The exhaust from the fuel smells like the food it fried.
By TIM YOVICH
VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF
LIBERTY -- George Jessup has decided to pack up his belongings and move back home to Panama City, Fla.
The interesting aspect of the 41-year-old Hazelwood Avenue man's departure is that he'll make the trip in a Mercedes-Benz Unimog truck fueled with used cooking oil.
"This is the ultimate way to travel," said Jessup, praising the 1962 German-made truck he had imported from Belgium.
He thinks there is only one other vehicle in the area that uses a cooking-oil-fueled engine.
Jessup, a gymnastics instructor by trade, said he has always been an off-road, four-wheel enthusiast.
In the 1980s, he got interested in alternative fuels. Another reason he bought the Mercedes was that it was already converted from a gasoline-powered engine to a diesel engine.
Diesel engines, Jessup explained, were originally designed to run on peanut oil to keep fuel costs down.
Inventor Rudolph Diesel developed the engine so German farmers could press some of their crops to produce oil as fuel and take the remainder to market.
A few modifications
After Jessup got his truck, which once was used as a German firetruck, he altered the engine so it now runs mostly on WVO -- waste vegetable oil.
"All's I did was some plumbing changes," Jessup said, noting that the engine takes a mixture of 70 percent cooking oil and 30 percent diesel fuel.
When he doesn't have oil, he operates it on diesel fuel.
And where does he get his WVO? The Belmont Avenue Arby's not far from his home.
The exhaust from the fuel mixture doesn't have the diesel odor noticeable in most trucks. It smells more like what the oil was used to fry, such as french fries.
"It smells like what was cooked," Jessup said.
Miles per gallon
Using the mixture of diesel fuel and WVO, Jessup said his truck, striped with yellow and brown, gets slightly less than 8 to 12 miles per gallon.
Power is about the same as with straight diesel fuel, he said, pointing out that the mixed fuel is much better for the atmosphere because the vegetable oil produces no hydrocarbon emissions to pollute the air, unlike gasoline and diesel fuel.
Jessup had about 15 gallons of corn oil on hand this week and asked friends to each bring a bottle of cooking oil to a party at his house Sunday.
Jessup carries his own oil filtration system in the truck.
After collecting the waste oil, he allows the crispy food particles to settle to the bottom of a container.
It's then run through a centrifuge-type filter, and the oil is then put in a storage tank. All Jessup has to do is open a side door, drain the oil into the truck's four fuel tanks, and then add the diesel fuel.
Jessup said his goal is to drive across the country, linking up with others who use oil to power their vehicles.
yovich@vindy.com