Waking Up the Vega-Watt

A few years ago, our campus bought a Vega-Watt for the campus.  It was supposed to take in used cooking oil and be fueled by it.  It doesn't change the oil besides filtering it, it is simply capable of creating power from the oil with its alternated engine.

However, the machine was never used, and thus rotted away surrounded by old leaves and garbage.  We had to fix that!

Here's the open machine

First off, we had to change the oil in the machine.  It seems like perhaps it was filled with oil at some point, and it mixed with rainwater and filled up the reservoir in the engine.  We figured out a way to drain the oil using a storm gutter and some dish pans.  There was a lot, and we didn't want to contaminate the environment, so we had to be very careful.

Here is Luis undoing the bolt that is holding back all the liquid

The oil and water were sitting together for so long the water had a weird color to it.

Now we start to see chunks of oil

Here comes the oil that was all on the top, as it doesn't mix with water!

Almost went over the top, but we had just enough room

Gloves for safety, very weird looking.

After this all was done, we had to safely get the oil and water mixture into a container so it can be properly disposed.  with gloves and a plastic cup, I slowly dumped the mixture into three 1-gallon jugs.

Then everything was finally clean!  We still have a lot more work to do, but everything looks much better now.

Until next time!

-Mallory