Grease Guzzlers

These Folks Fuel Their Diesel Cars With Cooking Oil. Slick, Huh?

In these days of eye-popping gas prices, Mike Leahy gets fuel for his Volkswagen Beetle at the Barking Dog, a popular Bethesda pub. Shane Sellers fuels up at a Chinese restaurant in Frederick. And Ben Tonken heads to a Tex-Mex eatery in the District.

"There's a bit of a smell when you get out," said Leahy, a D.C. lawyer. "A slight french fry smell. I kind of like it; it's kind of sweet. It smells better than diesel."

Welcome to the world of greasel -- the shorthand some use for grease and diesel. Leahy and the others are among a tiny but growing band of environmentalists and thrifty consumers who are turning to restaurants for free, used vegetable oil to fuel their diesel-engine cars.

With a little filtration and a car conversion kit, oil that once fried potatoes, egg rolls or tortilla chips is ready for its second act: air pollution fighter.

Sure, saving the world would be nice. But these folks don't really expect to. Most seem to be getting their hands greasy more to prove a point: There are alternatives to fossil fuels, and vegetable oil, according to studies, burns cleaner than diesel fuel. What's more, it can save money.

As for performance, drivers say there's virtually no difference. Wear and tear on the engine is the same, as is acceleration. So is gas mileage: about 40 to 55 miles per gallon, depending on the vehicle.

When Sellers, 31, bought an $800 conversion kit two years ago, "it had nothing to do with fuel prices; it was just a decision on having some sort of independence and challenging the use of fossil fuels," said the adjunct professor of art at Frederick Community College.

But with gas prices skyrocketing, he's saving $80 to $100 a month. Sellers is already on his second grease car, a 2002 VW Golf hatchback. He installed the conversion kit himself, but those who lack the mechanical chops pay an average of $900 to have it done. Installation in trucks can cost as much as $2,500.

Sellers's car still uses diesel when it has to. But once the engine and the vegetable oil warm up, he flips a switch to convert to vegetable oil, which is stored in a separate fuel tank. He burns through about 30 gallons a month, mostly canola oil.

The concept of vegetable oil as fuel is more back-to-the-future than leading edge. In 1900, an engineer named Rudolf Diesel used peanut oil to demonstrate his new high-compression engine at the World Exposition in Paris. Historians say he hoped that small-scale farmers would be able to "grow" their own fuel. But petroleum-based fuels soon became plentiful and cheap and wound up the fuel of choice.

More than 100 years after the world's fair, the "greasers," as some enthusiasts call themselves, are once again piquing the public's curiosity.

About a half-dozen times a day, as businessman Ben Tonken's silver 2002 VW Jetta station wagon idles at a red light, fellow motorists pepper him with questions after spotting the car's "powered by vegetable oil" decal.