Now don’t be fooled, these pictures were taken during the wvo conversion process which happened before the renovations inside or the fabulous metallic green paint job on the outside. As you can see, during this phase, the ambulance was stripped of all its public safety equipment including the flashing bar lights in front, and oscillating emergency lights around the top perimeter. For what seemed like a never ending bad hair day, we drove around in the big scruffy white elephant with color co-ordinated duct tape over the ambulance decals. Anyone who has lived though a renovation knows what I’m talking about when I say, we longed for the day when the vision would all come together.
Ok, on to how it works: The Great Green Ambulance has a two tank system. It has the original diesel engine and the original 30 gallon diesel tank. Using Greasecar.com components, we added a 40 gallon waste vegetable tank in one of the outside cabinets of the ambulance:
The tank is heated internally by a copper coil filled with coolant that runs from the cooling system through the tank and back to the radiator. You can see the wvo water filter wrapped in coolant filled copper tubing in this picture:
A fuel gauge for the wvo tank and three way fuel switching button was installed on the dashboard just to the right of the steering wheel. When the button is in the middle position, the vehicle is running on regular diesel. We start the engine on the diesel (or on biodiesel when we can get it) tank and let the engine as well as the oil in the veggie tank warm up to approximately 160 degrees. When the engine and the oil are heated sufficiently, we hit the button to the left to switch to drawing fuel from the veggie tank. Don’t be confused by the huge panel of switches to the far right of the picture.Those control a variety of electronics throughout the ambulance:
About a mile or so from our destination we hit the button on the dash to the right, which puts it into the purge cycle. This purges the wvo from the fuel lines by driving a stream of regular diesel (or biodiesel) back through the fuel lines all the way to the veggie tank. This is a most important step because if you leave veggie oil in the fuel lines it thickens as it cools and makes it just about impossible to start without some major McGuyvering.
Now here is one of my favorite parts of the Great Green Ambulance wvo system: the on-board filtration system. The green hose on the left has screen like end which can be inserted directly into either a grease trap or a cubie. It sucks up wvo and transports it directly into a heated canister which houses a sock filter. The sock filter filters out particles bigger than 1 micron:
Using the gas gun dispenser just above the wvo tank, the filtered wvo can then be pumped directly into the 40 gallon wvo tank if we’re confident that the oil has no suspended water in it. However, time and experience have taught us that most of the wvo we have access to needs to be dewatered no matter how much it has been filtered. Therefore we pump into cubies instead and process them later.
When we use oil from Chinese restaurants, it smells like Chinese food. When we use oil from donut shops, it smells like donuts. No matter what it smells like, it smells a million times better than regular diesel according to 100% of the toll collectors we’ve polled!
We’ve learned much about what it takes to adopt an alternative form of fuel. One of the best parts of this adventure has been the opportunity to learn from a wide range of energy revolutionaries. Pat Keaney and the rest of the folks at Green Grease Monkey have been inspiring as teachers, on road technical advisors, and alternative energy activists. We thank them for everything they’ve done to keep the Great Green Ambulance rolling down the road on veggie oil.
Here are links to a variety of wvo information pages with answers to frequently asked questions: