How reused fryer oil builds a house

Today I passed a small milestone in my house building project.  I created the first stage of my fryer oil filtering system. How, you may ask, does this relate to building a house?  The answer: transportation cost.  I shall explain.

The black container on top has a drain pipe roughly 3 inches high.  The oil settles, leaving the heaver "french fry" particles below the drain pipe.  The orange strap heater brings the oil to around 70F or 80F.  When ready, the vertical stick, attached to the plug, is pulled and the oil drains into the plastic barrel.  On its way it passes through a 200micron mesh "sock" filter.  The next step in the chain will be centrifugal filtering! 

The transport of goods for building are often transparent.  I strive to attain goods as locally as possible though some "local" goods may have traveled over great distances. Some materials can be created locally and I'll strive to use those first. To that end, I bought a diesel pickup intended to transport that which I can. Bricks, for example, are nearly always a regional material.  Picking them up myself cuts out a transportation link.  Diesel engines can run on waste vegetable oil (WVO).  Using such fuel helps to build my house more efficiently (I hope!)

To the savvy (and to those who are always trying to poke holes in sustainable concepts for the sake of argument), any discussion of energy sources exposes some of the embedded costs of handling and processing of fuel.  Even though I get the oil for "free," the actual cost of the fuel is far from free.  As of this writing, I've collected around 100gal of used oil, and spent around $2200 making the cost of the raw material roughly $20/gal.  That's quite a bit more than the current price of petrol diesel at $3.60/gal.  Without going into a long rant over the geopolitical economics of petroleum fuel, the price at the pump is considered underpriced as a result of cost externalizations.  Even factoring in an extreme measure of cost externalization, the price of petrol diesel probably doesn't approach $20/gal. Over time I can and will bring that price down, though the question becomes "by how much?" and is it sustainable?

Any discussion of fuel must necessarily encompass the production methods.  The production methods of veggie oil, while petroleum dependent, are no more so dependent than the production petroleum itself. The veggie outputs are not only more attractive from the standpoint of use (lower emissions pollutants, carbon cycle, etc), but the overall production impact is less when considering the byproducts of veggie oil production are far less toxic than that of petroleum.  All in all, using such fuel is a step in the sustainable direction by reducing externalization and the carbon cycle.  Bio fuels aren't perfect (maybe not even truly sustainable) though they are far more sustainable than petroleum fuels. Efficiency is the game even if sustainable is still too difficult to declare.

And that brings me to today where I processed roughly 10 gallons of oil through a 200 micron sock filter.  It didn't clog, and it filtered quickly.  Anyone who's tried to filter used veggie oil knows that it can go very wrong very fast and create a situation that is nigh on impossible to clean up.  Once operational, I can shift 90% (or better) of my fuel use to a more efficient fuel.  A fuel that reduces cost externalization.  A fuel that reduces pollutants.

And taken to the next level: I will have reduced the overall cost footprint of my house just a little bit more.