Madison Park students build vegetable oil-burning car

Yawu Miller

Juan David Lozano’s introduction to diesel engines was under the hood of a Peugeot 504 diesel.

His senior project at Madison Park Technical Vocational High School: to make sense of the maze of hoses and wires surrounding the straight-four engine and convert the car into a vegetable oil-burning biodiesel.

His teacher for the project, Pat Keaney, is a Jamaica Plain-based expert on biodiesel who has converted dozens of Volkswagens, Volvos and Mercedes Benzes to the ranks of the fry-grease-powered.

“What people don’t realize is that Massachusetts has more alternative fuel vehicles than almost any other place in the country,” said Automotive Technology Instructor Charles Johnson, whose program has more than 100 students.

“Gas cars are on their way out,” Johnson continues. “These guys are caught up in a transition time. Alternative fuels are something these guys need to know about.”

Lozano decided to get involved with the project because he says he has a longstanding interest in environmentally sound cars.

“I actually thought it was going to be easier,” said Lozano, who began tinkering with cars under his grandfather’s tutelage at the age of 13. “We had to make a lot of modifications.”

The Peugeot, legendary in developing nations for its durability, is what Lozano describes as “extremely over-built.”

“There’s always two bolts holding up something that would ordinarily need one bolt,” he said. “And the sheet metal was a lot thicker than normal.”

Lozano and the other seniors who worked on the project were up to the challenge, completing the job within their five-day time slot.

Waste oil, procured from restaurants, is an emerging alternative fuel source that can be used for automobiles as well as oil-burning home heating systems. Because restaurants normally pay waste disposal firms to get rid of their vegetable oil, they are usually happy to give away the grease for free.

Sodium hydroxide and methanol are added to the oil to stabilize it. The oil works in place of diesel fuel and produces far fewer harmful gasses, as Lozano and the other students found out when they performed emissions tests on their newly-converted Peugeot.

Last week the students worked on a convertible Volkswagen Rabbit. Student Oscar Augusto pointed out a green switch installed on the dashboard, which changes the fuel line over from diesel to vegetable oil. The vegetable oil tank on this car is installed in the spare tire well in the trunk.

The students run a hose from the car’s radiator to the vegetable oil tank so the heat from the engine warms the grease. The fuel line from the vegetable oil tank runs inside of the radiator fluid hose.

When the finished car is started, it runs off of its diesel fuel. After sufficient heat is generated in the cooling system, the green switch is activated, bringing the pre-heated vegetable oil into the fuel injectors.

With two vegetable oil conversions under his belt, Johnson is thinking about making the conversions a permanent fixture at the school.

“We have the space here,” he said. “We also have the experience.”