Thursday, September 20, 2012

The Law Might Not Let You Make Your Own Biodiesel

Bio diesel fuels (made from plant or animal fats and some form of alcohol) are used by many localities, to run trucks or buses. But vegetable oil has some legal barriers. Vegetable oil has to be certified by the federal government for use as a motor oil. Certification is required by the Environmental Protection Agency for any engine systems modified to use vegetable oil. To date, no vegetable oil conversion has achieved EPA certification. So when you change your bus into a grease car you are illegally tampering with your emissions system. A properly converted modern automotive diesel can be fueled by vegetable oil and meet or exceed the requirements of the EPA emission standards, giving better results than ULSD diesel fuel from a renewable fuel.
There is another barrier that will slow the production of vegetable oil as a fuel. Vegetable oil can be collected by any individual for their own use without a license in any state as far as I know. Laws very from state to state. Any fuel used to fuel a diesel engine is considered diesel fuel according to the IRS. Therefore Straight vegetable oil ( SVO ) or Waste Vegetable OIL ( WVO ) is taxed the same as petro based diesel fuel. If you considered collecting used cooking oil for processing and resale you will have to pay a fee from a government control on it and then you also pay a License fee for hauling the oil. Now this will very state to state also and the cost is not small. Try storing a half million gallons of ( WVO ), you would have the EPA knocking your door down.
For the home brew small use person there isn't a problem collecting your WVO and processing it in your garage. That is changing bit by bit. I know in Alaska you have to claim it on your tax return. You pay $0.08 per gallon on the state and $0.244 per gallon on the Fed. The user must submit their Alaska Motor Tax on a monthly basis. Weather you do or not is hard to prove. Alaska wants their road tax so there must be a lot of WVO activity up there to get the state worried about tax collection for the roads. I believe we should pay for our roads through fuel tax as long as its far.
Weather its bio deisel, WVO, or SVO you will have to process the fuel or modify the diesel engine. You can pay your taxes or not pay them. If you get into processing on a large scale you will have no choice. Its a bit hard to hide large tanks of WVO. On the small scale though the project of processing your own WVO for your grease car or skoolie should be fun and you should be able to run (in some cases) under a dollar a gallon. That's my plan on the school bus conversion I'm building.
Frederick Carter
http://greasecar.wordpress.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Frederick_Carter

No comments:

Post a Comment