From the fryer to the fuel tank

It's a good thing Tony Erickson likes french fries. Every time he drives his 2001 Ford F350 Super Duty Dually 4x4 he gets a steady whiff.

"I took some mares over to a friend's house and said, ‘Smell my tailpipe.' He was amazed," Erickson said.

A Colorado Springs Police Department sergeant by night and a Simla farmer by day, Erickson recently acquired another title: biofuel home brewer.

As gasoline and diesel prices began hitting record highs last year, Erickson's wallet was hit hard. He was paying more than $100 in diesel fuel to fill the 31-gallon tank in his truck.

"I wanted to look at options," said Erickson, who works at the Falcon Police Substation. "Americans keep paying these higher prices for fuel, and you can either complain or do something about it."

His mechanic, D&L's Service in Limon, presented a solution that halves his fuel bills and lowers his exhaust emissions.

Using a simple filtration process, Erickson turns spent vegetable and peanut oil he gets for free from Colorado Springs restaurants into what's known as "greasel."

He mixes the clean oil - which looks as pure as though it came from a store-bought bottle - with regular diesel fuel in a 50/50 blend to power his truck.

The homemade alternative fuel is good enough to enable Erickson to do farm chores and haul up to 10 tons of cattle, horses and hay.

"I was a skeptic, and I'm still in the experimental phase, but it's working," he said.

Erickson said his truck has had no change in power running on the waste byproduct. He's hit a few bumps along the way, but has corrected them to maintain performance. Installing a heated fuel line, for example, improved gas mileage by 2 miles per gallon, so he now gets up to 16 mpg depending on load weight, and helped the engine crank over in cold weather.

To test the effect of cold, he put the mixture in the freezer for an hour. He also drove his truck to the summit of Pikes Peak to gauge high-altitude performance.

The results of both experiments were encouraging, Erickson said, and the savings make the effort worthwhile. Factoring in his supply costs and the time it takes to collect and process the oil, he's cut his fuel bills by about half.

And the savings continue to mount, with the average price of diesel at $4.03 a gallon in Colorado Springs on Monday, according to AAA Colorado. Nationally, diesel averaged $4.20 a gallon Monday, a record high.

To create his biodiesel system, Erickson spent about $425 on equipment, a 1,000-gallon collection tank, 55-gallon drums, filters, centrifugal pumps and hose.

The filtration process is messy, he said, but uncomplicated. Every other week, he collects used cooking oil from local restaurants - he won't disclose which ones because he said the product is in high demand from fellow grease car enthusiasts and there have been cases of theft of oil drums.

At his farm, he removes the sludge, heats the oil to 65 degrees to separate any water in it and in about 10 minutes produces up to 40 gallons of greasel. To prevent waste, he mixes the sludge and the last 8 inches of oil in cattle feed or fertilizer.

For every 15 gallons of oil and diesel mix, Erickson adds a gallon of premium unleaded gasoline to help break down the accelerant in the oil. He also changes the fuel filter in his truck frequently.

The filtered oil must be clean and free of water to perform properly, Erickson said, and the method works best on diesel vehicles older than model year 2003.

He's still perfecting his rudimentary system, but he's gearing up to run an older model John Deere tractor on the mixture.

"All the farmers out here are looking for ways to cut expenses. We're all concerned about what it's going to cost us this season to make hay, and we're looking for alternatives," Erickson said.

He's not the only eastern plains resident to make fuel out of fryer oil. For the past two years, Linda Otto, one of the owners of D&L's Service, and her husband, Don, have been running several company trucks on recycled peanut oil and have taught the method to other customers.

"Peanut oil is much more of a lubricant than diesel fuel, so the vehicles tend to perform better," she said. "And our cost is about 36 cents a gallon. Restaurants don't charge us for the oil because they tend to have to pay to get rid of it."

The french fry odor can be a problem, though, she said: "You don't want to be riding in the vehicle if you're really hungry because that makes it worse."

CONTACT THE WRITER: 636-0235 or debbie.kelley@gazette.com