Car Fuel Consuption Charts

Here are some historic charts of our fuel consumption in our cars. My wife is the daughter of an accountant - does it show?

Chart 1: Fuel Prices vs Time

• Red: Gas CAD per litre
• Purple: Diesel CAD per litre (post pump price jump)

Chart 2: Cumulative fuel volume purchased

• Pink: Gas (Ford Taurus)
• Black: Diesel (Jetta TDI)
  

Chart 3: Cumulative fuel volume purchased (just diesel)

Notice how fuel consumption per day does up when winter comes - efficiency goes down.

• Grey boxes: winter months
• Purple box: road trip from Ottawa to Florida
• Red box: summer
  

Chart 4: km per day

• Blue: Gas (Ford Taurus)
• Purple: Diesel (Jetta TDI)
  

Chart 5: km per day (just diesel)

Brown gold

Oil's density is about 0.9kg per liter. Making a 20L bucket of waste veggie oil worth about $18 (Diesel is about $1/L) after you account for dregs and cost of processing.

Gold's price is over $740CAD at the time of this posting. 32.15 Troy Ounces per kg.
18L of oil is about 16.2kg. 16.2kg of gold is worth $385,414.20.

Not quite gold - but money in your pocket just the same.

Here's a video intended to show you the ugly side of oil collection.

Things to note:

1. This is garbage
2. Don't use the oil that's left outside


1. Once water gets in and heat from the elements is applied - it starts to grow bacteria and ferment
2. If there was a dead animal at the bottom of the barrel / dumpster you couldn't tell - it's that bad
3. Provide your oil supplier with sealed metal buckets and be prompt in oil pickup
   
3. Use rubber gloves all the times - life's too short.

Here's the video:

A peek in my Garage

There are many great resources online describing how people have setup their oil processing plants. There are very few videos and pictures showing the details of how they process their oil on a daily basis.

Here's the first video of many to come describing how I solicit, collect, filter, dewater, store and use vegetable oil as fuel for my car. Here's a summary

You need 4 locations:

1. Pre-filter storage - store all the raw used oil before filtering
2. Filtering - gravity feed is easy, cheap and simple
3. Dewatering - removal of any water suspended in the oil is crucial for long term storage and the life of your car
4. Storage - storing the finished product

Things you need handy:

1. Kitchen gloves - keep your hands clean
2. Newsprint - cover the ground for easy clean up
3. Plastic vapour barrier - use when transporting oil in car and under dewatering setup
4. Toilet paper - handy to clean up small dips and spills; store it in a clean dry yogourt container to keep clean