While many people in the county recycle by giving their used goods to recycling centers so that they may be reused, some are getting more inventive by reusing cooking oil as an additive in their diesel engines in order to save on fuel costs.

Also, in the Montgomery, a group is pushing to get rid of burdensome taxes and rules for residents who want to install solar panels on their home in order to cut the cost of their electric bill.

The idea of using cooking oil for fuel has been around for over 100 years. In fact, late in his career, Rudolf Diesel—the inventor of the diesel engine—looked into using vegetable oil to fuel his engines. In 1912, in a presentation to the British Institute of Mechanical Engineers, he is quoted as saying, “The fact that fat oils from vegetable sources can be used may seem insignificant today, but such oils may perhaps become in course of time of the same importance as some natural mineral oils and the tar products are now.”

Nearly 100 years later, those ideas have been put to the test. Though there are a number of people in the county that put reused cooking oil into their fuel mix, they have to be careful not to use too much cooking oil in their fuel blends or else they might be fined for driving on untaxed fuel.

One driver, who asked for their name not to be used, said that there is a small network of drivers in the county that collect used cooking oil from restaurants and then blend them with diesel in order to reduce their fuel costs and reduce emissions.

“I got turned on to it by a friend,” the driver said. “He had been doing it for about a year. I though it sounded good and I thought about the process [and decided to try it.] The most laborious part, I found, wasn’t [blending the fuel] it was gathering the oil.”

The driver gathered used frying oil throughout January and February of 2007. “I’ve been gathering [used cooking oil] for about 18 months and I’ve been burning it in a vehicle for about 14 months now,” the driver said.

He talked about the St. Clair diesel group and how they go about getting enough fuel.

“We make an arrangement with a restaurant to take their used frying oil and we go through a process of filtering it,” said the driver.

When blending the frying oil with diesel, the driver said that it is important to get the right viscosity in order not to have the blended fuel too thick.

“If it gets too viscous, you get coke—or carbon—deposits on your cylinder head, which can cause internal damage,” the driver said. “If you blend it right though, it works.”

The driver said that burning used cooking oil should be viewed as an additive as opposed to running it solely in an engine. Fuel additives are not taxed in Alabama.

“I’ve never run pure vegetable oil,” said the driver. “So I’m running taxed fuel.”

The driver said that fuel economy and performance have not been affected in his car. Some cleaner-burning fuels, such as E-85 ethanol, cause cars to lose fuel economy while burning cleaner fuel.

“It’s pretty much a wash in both mileage and performance,” the driver said. “If you heat [used cooking oil] up and you inject it hot then it’ll work because it’ll atomize—like how a perfume sprayer makes perfume smaller and be able to spray smaller droplets. To get proper combustion, you want to have very small droplets of fuel; that’s why viscosity is so important. Otherwise, it squirts and wet fuel gets left behind and burns your cylinders up.”

Solar power is another form of reusing something that is already available. During this year’s legislative session the Alternative Renewal Energy Act of 2008 was passed. The act eased the restrictions for people who want to put up a solar panel.

Because solar power is expensive to produce initially, the bill reduced the cost for requirements for homeowners that want to put up solar panels.

“We are huge proponent of solar power,” Alabama Power spokeswoman Gina Warren said. “We have a group in our environmental organization that is looking into alternative use. [Solar power] is a very expensive proposal right now.”

Warren talked about the Alternative Renewal Energy Act. “It loosened some of the restrictions that you have to go through to be able to use solar power for homeowners. For a normal homeowner, there were a lot of hoops that they had to jump through. If you are looking at producing 100-kilowatt hours or less, then it’s easier to do this now.”

The 100-kilowatt limit was set because hooking into the Alabama Power grid can cause safety issues. Because of the safety issue, homeowners used to have to carry $1 million in insurance if they wanted to use solar power.

The Alternative Renewal Energy Act lessoned that insurance amount for people who wanted to produce energy for private use.

Now Alabama residents can produce up to 25-kilowatt hours with minimum insurance.

“That really opens it up for people who are interested in doing this,” Warren said. “Last week the [Alabama Power] Public Service Commission adopted the legislation and took it out of their requirements. Now we don’t have to require that people carry so much insurance. This has really made this more feasible.”