The vegetable oil that you Calamari is cooked in at the two Cha Cha Cha Restaurants in San Francisco also has a new and second life at Eatwell Farm powering ou irrigation pump. Each Saturday we drive to the farmers market, unload our produce then pick up used oil to truck back to the farm after the market. On the farm it is filtered and stored until we need it.
The engine has been converted to run on used oil. It works by first starting the engine on diesel. When the engine and the cooling systen water is nice and hot, after about 10 minutes, we switch over to vegetable oil. The oil is heated by the water that cools the engine to 180F. It passes through and heated filter and then to the fuel injector. At 180F it has the same viscosity as diesel so the engine does not know the difference. When we want to turn off the pump we switch it back to diesel for ten minutes to flush out all the oil. It is simple and effective. As this pump uses about 36 gallons of fuel in 24 hours then this adds up to considerable savings in money. The oil is used twice for Calamari and pumping water and the emissions from the vegetable oil aare only half that of diesel.
It all makes sense to me.