Minnesota Schools Cutting Carbon

With the rising problems from polluting the air and the gas prices for automobiles, some people are coming to very unheard of solutions. Cars engineered to run off of vegetable oil! Dan Houg, of Bemidji, MN, has done just this to his 1991 Volkswagen Jetta. He has converted it so that it not only saves him money but it also is carbon neutral, using carbon from recently growing plants that have scavenged carbon from the atmosphere. There have been other people that have done this to their car too, but they are living in warmer climates. Houg has constructed a heated fuel system that allows vegetable oil to be used in a cold Northern Minnesota climate. So far, he has driven over 40,000 on used fryer oil and it is still running smoothly!

When Houg’s car starts up it goes about six miles on diesel fuel while the vegetable oil warms up. Once the vegetable oil gets to a certain temperature he switches over the fuel lines and just like that he is running on an efficient 45 MPG vegetable oil powered Vehicle. Houg has only one maintenance detail, and that is replacing the vegetable oil filter after every 5,000 miles.

Vegetable oil can work as a substitute for diesel fuel. It is renewable, resourceful, low in particulates, and it is produced domestically. He gets his vegetable oil from Itasca Community College and other local areas that are finished with it after frying their foods.
Houg saves money and the environment from harmful chemicals that enter it from normally operated vehicles. The only stipulation is an excise tax that the government has placed on it which is only twenty cents per gallon, which doesn’t compare to the $2.00+ per gallon that we are all facing right now.