Country Life In The City

Motorists looking for an environmentally friendly and cheaper alternative to diesel fuel are increasingly turning to small suppliers for used cooking oil.

Refined cooking oil currently costs about 10% less than diesel in the UK and can be poured directly into unmodified diesel engines. Although the global recession and steep drop in oil prices has spelt the end for many large scale refineries, smaller ‘kitchen sink’ manufacturers are becoming ever more popular and are inundated with offers of free oil from restaurants.

Some suppliers even deliver jugs of oil to your doorstep, in a similar way to a milk round.

Used cooking oil will never take over from diesel, but it is one of a number of small changes which, when combined could make a difference in the fight against global warming. Even the vast appetite for fried food in the whole of the western world wouldn’t produce enough oil to serve all our cars, but it could contribute to a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and therefore please the  climate change environmentalists.

There are arguments about the widespread use od cooking oil.

Peder Jensen, a transport specialist at the European Environment Agency thinks that the main barriers to the fuel are “structural”, like the lack of standards for processing the fuel and adapting and maintaining vehicles to run on it.

Others disagree. Stuart Johnson, manager of engineering and environment at Volkswagen of America, called putting raw vegetable oil in cars a bad idea and said, We don’t recommend it. The inconsistent quality of cooking oil fuel, he said, means that it may contain impurities and it may be too viscous, especially for newer, more complex diesel engines with injection systems.

Cars can be adapted for cooking oil fuel if needed, for about £200.  It involves putting in a small heater to pre-warm fuel so that it is thinner, and installing injection nozzles that are somewhat wider. Thousands of kits have been sold in Europe and the United States, though it is illegal in America to sell cars that have been adapted.

But Dr. Jensen cautioned that drivers who used cooking oil fuel were taking a risk and might lose their warranty protection.