“I Make My Own Gas!”

Most Americans depend on faraway countries for their fuel; Paul Michalke depends on Quang Deli in Minneapolis. Michalke, a cheery and energetic man who publishes trade-show directories, siphons used cooking oil from a dumpster in the alley behind Quang’s, a popular Vietnamese restaurant on Nicollet Avenue. Later, in his garage in South Minneapolis, he converts the grease into gas and uses it in his 2001 Volkswagen Jetta.

Michalke makes biodiesel by adding methanol, lye, and a little elbow grease to the oil. The end product is an egg roll-scented, biodegradable fuel that performs a lot like standard diesel. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, biodiesel emits nearly fifty percent less carbon monoxide than standard diesel. It costs Michalke less than fifty cents a gallon.

Initially, friends thought he was crazy, especially when he decided to test homemade biodiesel on his new Jetta. “They said, ‘Can’t you try it out on a lawnmower?’” Michalke recalled. “But there aren’t many lawn mowers around with diesel engines.” Although he admitted he was “scared as hell” when he first poured biodiesel into his car three years ago, it has led to trouble-free, economical driving ever since. Michalke worries about high fuel prices only in the winter, when it is too cold to use his stir-fried diesel. Most biodiesel begins to congeal at around thirty degrees, whereas standard diesel stays liquid well below zero. (On the upside, biodiesel exhaust contributes almost no greenhouse gases and smells like popcorn.)

Michalke learned the basics of home production from Joshua Tickell’s how-to-book From the Fryer to the Fuel Tank. Tickell told me his book has sold about twenty thousand copies, and estimated that twenty percent of his readers have tried to make biodiesel at home.

Homemade biodiesel is unlikely to catch on in the United States, since only one percent of U.S. automobiles have diesel engines. And of course most people would be afraid of killing themselves or ruining their cars. But Michalke swears that Tickell’s book puts home brewing within reach of even the most clumsy garage chemist. “It’s like a cookbook with pretty pictures,” he said. “It’s like making brownies.”

In fact, the biggest challenge may be asking ethnic restaurant owners for their used oil. “It was hard to explain what I wanted because of the language barrier,” Michalke said of his first grease run to a Chinese restaurant. “When they finally understood me, one girl looked at me like I was an idiot and said, ‘Why don’t you go to a gas station?’”

After filtering out any bean sprouts or bamboo shoots, Michalke takes a titration to determine how much lye he will need. He then dissolves the lye in four gallons of methanol. At ninety-nine dollars for fifty-five gallons, methanol is Michalke’s biggest expense, but that is enough to make about 250 gallons of biodiesel. Methanol also presents the biggest danger, especially when it combines with lye to form a hot, flammable, and corrosive mixture. Michalke mixes the two wearing rubber gloves and a gas mask, making him look more doughboy than environmentalist.

Once the lye dissolves in the methanol, Michalke pours the solution into a plastic barrel with twenty gallons of used vegetable oil. An enormous fish-tank heater keeps the mix above seventy degrees, and a mixer attached to a drill stirs it for an hour. Then the mixture sits overnight (most of the process involves waiting). In the morning, about twenty-three gallons of biodiesel have separated and are floating on top of the by-product, glycerin. Each batch of fuel will keep his Jetta running for 830 miles.

“I got into this because I wanted to leave as small a footprint as possible, and to live simply without being a Luddite,” Michalke explained as he washed the grease out of his jugs. Like other biodiesel folks, Michalke tends to be obsessive about doing good, minimizing pollution, and eliminating waste. Holding a sludgy mass of soap, he said proudly, “I made this from the leftover glycerin!”—Matt Dueholm


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