Man fuels up vehicle with home brew
You don’t need a science Ph.D. to brew your own motor fuel, although Jeffrey Orrey happens to have one.
The 41-year-old is a geophysicist, a specialty common among oil-industry scientists. But petroleum isn’t a factor in his day job, where he develops satellite and aerial-imaging software.
As a hobby, Orrey turns used vegetable oil into biodiesel in his Boulder garage. He makes it in 30-gallon batches in a converted hot-water heater and a couple of 55-gallon drums. His Toyota 4Runner drinks it. He hasn’t been to a filling station in two months.
Orrey is among a growing number of local home brewers whose products are destined for gas tanks rather than beer bottles.
“Especially during the Iraq war, I thought more and more about energy independence, and I was fascinated with the idea that I could actually make my own fuel,” Orrey said.
He stood in his one-car garage as he spoke. A familiar array of bicycles and lawn implements shared space with his biodiesel reactor.
He made it himself last year, from a standard design called an “Appleseed” biodiesel processor.
Orrey’s setup includes two blue 55-gallon drums he got from a local organic soap maker, a 5-gallon plastic bottle and a used 40-gallon General Electric hot-water heater.
To make biodiesel, Orrey combines 25 gallons of vegetable oil, 5 gallons of methanol from Bandimere Speedway in Morrison, and about 2 pounds of potassium hydroxide or, in a pinch, Red Devil drain cleaner.
The modified hot-water heater circulates the mixture at 130 degrees for two hours. Orrey transfers the brew to a drum partially filled with water. Two fish-tank bubblers purify it for a day or two.
He then pumps the oil to the second drum, where a coffee-colored byproduct, glycerine, settles to the bottom. The beery liquid above it is biodiesel.
Orrey transfers it to a third drum outfitted with wheels and, via a section of garden hose, feeds his Toyota, named “Ester” after the methyl esters that give biodiesel its oomph. He said it costs about 70 cents a gallon, not counting labor.
The vegetable oil is the key ingredient. Orrey pulled the cap from a white bucket that held a recent donation. It was tar sprinkled with charred peanuts.
“It’s not for everybody,” Orrey said. “You need a willingness to play with some fairly nasty chemicals and used fryer oil from a restaurant.”
Orrey said he gets his from an Asian restaurant, but he declined to elaborate.
“We home brewers are guarded about our sources,” Orrey said.
Restaurants serving fish are coveted because they change their cooking oil frequently, Orrey said.
Restaurants are motivated to donate because they can avoid paying to have it picked up.
If dumping used vegetable oil into a gas tank seems unnatural, remember that biodiesel predates petro-diesel. Rudolph Diesel’s new engine took the grand prize at the 1900 Paris Exposition in no small part because it ran on peanut oil. Further, biodiesel burns cleaner than diesel.
The National Biodiesel Board says U.S. commercial biodiesel production tripled, from 25 million gallons to 75 million gallons in 2005. There were 50 commercial plants in the United States as of January, to be joined by another 40 under construction, according to the board.
Orrey’s wife, Victoria, and daughter, Sofia, 5, have been supportive of his hobby.
“I was amazed _ it smelled like egg rolls,” Victoria Orrey said. “And I said, ‘Oh my God, this is actually happening. You actually made the fuel for this car.’ ”
Steve Sherman, of Boulder County, has brewed his own biodiesel for more than two years and has taught classes on getting started.
The limiting factor, Sherman said, is finding restaurants amid growing competition for used oil. He has three sources, he said.
Although biodiesel also saves a bit of money, Sherman said he’s happiest about the environmental benefits.
“I’m burning something that’s almost carbon-neutral,” he said. “The carbon dioxide I put in the air was there a year or two ago before it ended up in a soybean or rapeseed plant.”