phillyBURBS.Com

1/10/08

'Green' car a well-oiled machine 

By JOAN HELLYER
Bucks County Courier Times

College student Jake Harr needed a way to travel between his Middletown home and Unity College in Maine.

The 2005 Bucks County Technical High School graduate said he wanted to make the 500-mile road trips in a vehicle that was reliable, didn't hurt the environment and wasn't expensive.

Harr started doing some research his senior year in high school and came up with the idea to modify a diesel-fueled 1978 Mercedes into a vehicle that also runs on used vegetable oil.

He said he spent about $30 to convert the vehicle and has been using it since 2005 while he's at college and for the 500-mile trips to and from home.

On Wednesday, he showed Franklin Delano Roosevelt Middle School students how the vehicle works.

“I have installed a supplementary fuel system. I have two fuel lines running to the engine and I'm able to switch from one source [diesel] to another [vegetable],” said Harr, 20, as he looked under the front hood of the car.

The college student told the Bristol Township kids he gets restaurants to donate the used oil for the supplemental fuel system. He runs it through a heated filter he made, in part, with recycled materials to purify the oil before he pumps it into a large container in the trunk of the car.

“It takes about 10 minutes of filtering per 5 gallons [of vegetable oil],” Harr said.

The container fills up about half of the four-door sedan's trunk. It feeds the line that's connected to the car engine.

Harr said he gets about 25 miles per gallon with either system but tries to use the vegetable oil source as his primary fuel because it reduces the amount of harmful emissions released into the air.

He said he's also found it to be safer for his car's engine, because it doesn't provide as much wear and tear as diesel fuel.

“The vegetable oil doesn't have the same energy as the diesel fuel. It's a bit less, but the difference is minute. [In fact] it actually feels like the car is running faster when I am using the vegetable oil,” he said.

 
Harr and a few other Unity students who also have converted vehicles have combined their renewable energy efforts to create a storage facility for the used vegetable oil.

The long-term goal is to make it into a processing center where drivers can pull up to have the reused vegetable oil pumped into their vehicles, just like at a gas station.

“It could be a quick and easy process,” said Harr, a writing major at the environmental college. He said he is leaning toward some sort of environmental career based on his renewable energy effort.

Harr visited with seventh-grade students, many of whom are members of FDR's Youth Organized for Disaster Action Team, to discuss his initiative. The YODA team is preparing a presentation on climate change and the use of renewable energy for the national Wheelabrator symposium in Florida, group advisers said.

They plan to use the information Harr gave them.

“I think a lot of other people should be interested in this and try it out,” FDR seventh-grader Dornell Burrell, 12, said. “We have the point of view of someone who actually went through and did it and that's special.”

Harr told the kids he's already planning for his road trip back to Unity for the spring semester of his junior year.

“If the container [in the trunk of the car] is full of vegetable oil, I'll be able to drive all the way back to Maine for free,” he said.

Want to know more?

Go to http://www.fryodiesel.com/ or http://www.greasecar.com/ for more information about renewable energy efforts for cars.