Disabled Motorist
Fighting for the rights of Disabled Motorists since 1922
Fuel the of future
It’s hard to believe you can run your diesel car on vegetable
oil from
the supermarket.., yet hundreds of UK motorists are doing just that.
Well, actually, no.
When Rudolph Diesel developed his engine in the late 19th century, he fully intended it to be capable of running on vegetable oil. Indeed, when he demonstrated it to the world in Paris in 1900 it was powered by peanut oil.
In 1912, Diesel said: “The use of vegetable oils for engine fuels may seem insignificant today. But such oils may become in course of time as important as petroleum and the coal tar products of the present time.” Perhaps that time is now coming, after a century during which Big Oil has dominated the world’s economies. It won’t be quick as there are vested interests, from governments to global corporations, keen to maintain their profits or tax revenues from petroleum use, while at the same time there is, as yet, little obvious commercial gain to drive the take-up of vegetable-based fuels. Yet the environmental gains alone should be enough to persuade the whole of mankind to switch today. A vegetablefuel is, unlike the mineral oils we are currently burning, renewable. You can just grow more. Also, its effect on the atmosphere through carbon dioxide production is neutral —whatever is emitted is taken up again and turned into oxygen by plants being grown for the next tank-full. It is also far safer and non-toxic to handle than petroleum oils.
These irresistible environmental arguments will, eventually, win the day, but it will take many years to loosen the worldwide grip of petroleum. For example, even though we could all start saving the planet tomorrow, the UK Government has set the duty we must pay on vegetable oil the moment it is poured into a ear fuel tank at a level that
means there is no economic advantage. For now, then, the reasons for running your vehicle legally on vegetable-based fuel will have to be environmental — unless you are one of those motorists thought to be using vegetable oil but not declaring it to HM Customs & Excise.
For those who want to try it out — and we recommend you research far beyond this article before you take the plunge —there is a first choice to make, between “biodiesel” and pure “straight” vegetable oil. Biodiesel, which is commercially available in some parts of the country, is vegetable oil which has been treated in a process called “transesterification”, using methanol or ethanol to which produce an oil very similar to diesel fuel as we know
In
America, where methanol can be bought over the counter, many people are making
their own biodiesel. In this country it is a controlled chemical so you don’t
really have this option. There is, however, an alternative pure vegetable
oil. Yes, the stuff you buy in plastic bottles from the supermarket and which
is often made from the bright yellow rape-seed plants that blanket our countryside
in early summer.To find Out more, Disabled Motorist spoke to a renewable energy pioneer who has appeared on television programmes such as Science Shack and Fifth Gear to spread the word about vegetable oil. Jan Tansley is currently working to bring power to parts of Africa using the sun’s energy through his company Bright Light Solar. Ian, who
lives in Wales, is also the driver of a car with two fuel tanks, one for mineral diesel, the other for vegetable oil.
“I got involved about two or three years ago when I was in the States at a renewable energy fair and I got talking to someone running a VW Golf on vegetable oil,” explains Ian. His colleague was using home-made biodiesel, but, Ian said: “The problem is that in this country you can’t legally have methanol unless you are registered, so it isn’t really a practical solution for the DiY person in the UK.
“In terms of making yourself a fuel which is cost-effective it is not really worth doing. You have to do all these nasty things and use dangerous chemicals . . . or you can power it on vegetable oil.”
“You don’t have to do anything to the engine, the only thing that needs to happen is that the oil needs to be thin enough and in order to do that you heat it up.
“The temperature it needs to be is 80C, which is almost the same as the coolant in the engine. I made a heat exchanger to do this. There is no big expense in modifying the car providing you can get yourself down to the plumbers’ merchant for a couple of lengths of copper pipe.”
You also need to make sure your fuel injectors are of the right make some are better suited than others, he says.
“It is very, very simple,” adds Ian, although you should bear in mind that this is how a design engineer sees it. He has now driven thousands of miles in his twin-tank Mercedes and has found that in the summer the vegetable oil itself is warm enough for starting, but in colder months he starts from the mineral diesel tank, then switches once
the vegetable oil has been heated sufficiently. Jan says there have been some negative reports about using vegetable oil, including gumirning up of the fuel injectors, but believes that may be down to how research is carried out. “Practical experience is that no such effects happen. There are people who have been running on vegetable oil for five or six years, doing huge mileage and getting no ill effects.”
Many people, when they realise they can pick up fresh vegetable oil from the supermarket for around 4Op a litre, will be looking for the catch. Well, that lies in the duty levied by the Government.
This is still a slightly hazy area, but from information provided by HM customs and Excise it seems that at the moment any vegetable oil fuel is taxed at the same rate as Ultra-low sulphur diesel (ULSD) — 45.82p per litre (before last month’s Budget). This immediately makes vegetable oil around thesame price to use as standard diesel.
The Chancellor promised last November that he would be introducing a new duty rate for bioethanol biodiesel at 2Op per litre below the ULSD rate, adding: The Government will discuss with stakeholders when to introduce this.” But for any other fuel “substituting for diesel”, such as vegetable oil, motorist should assume it will continue to be taxed at the ULSD rate.
It’s perhaps little wonder, then, that people are thought to be putting undeclared vegetable oil in their tanks. “At the moment the duty is so high that literally hundreds and hundreds of people are using vegetable oil every day,” says Ian. “They are mixing it with diesel 50:50 or even 80:20 and they aren’t declaring it. There are a lot of
people out there doing it. I must get half a dozen calls a day on this subject.”
He explains that vegetable and standard diesel oil mix very well together and that most engines will run quite happily with you just pouring in the two oils and the movement of the car mixing them together. In this way no heating of the fuel is needed either.
“I have mixed diesel and vegetable oil in a one-litre container and they do seem to mix quite evenly. I found it took two or three months of keeping it very still to see any settling out.”
So even mixing 50:50 diesel and pure vegetable oil, someone could cut their fuel bill by 25 per cent if they do not declare it. “It can be a huge saving for people in big four-wheel drives,” adds Jan. “They are very tempted” But he does not approve of this attitude. “I’m disappointed that people aren’t being more open. They are doing it
to save money and aren’t particularly interested in saving the planet. Nothing much will change unless people are prepared to stand up and tell the Government they want something to be done.
“1 think it is a duty of any business to promote their products and look after their industries and I think it is in the interests of any government to respond to the lobbyings. wherever they get them from. “What’s lacking at the moment is any kind of strong lobby because there is no commercial interest. If we want to
create a reaction against that, I think we need to stand up and say it is vegetable oil we want to use. And the reasons for using it are growing ever stronger. Ian explains that waste vegetable oil is just as good as new for fuel once it has been filtered
He buys it ready filtered for about 26p a litre from wholesalers who make regular deliveries around the country as they pick up waste oil and deliver new to catering outlets. Ian says the best way to find a supplier is to knock on
the door of the nearest pub or restaurant and ask where they get their oil from.
At this price, even with duty added, there is a small financial benefit but a huge one for the environment. “At the moment we have a waste vegetable oil lake building up,” says Ian. “It used to be put into animal feeds, but since the BSE breakout that has stopped because it can contain animal products.
“So it doesn’t really have a home and waste vegetable oil is starting to build up. I calculated that 5 per cent of all diesel use in the UK could be switched without having to use any more vegetable oil. And five per cent is a huge quantity. With vegetable oil you could do it tomorrow; it could just happen.”
Jan sees no reason why, in about 20 years, a large proportion of our engines should not be running on vegetable fuel, although he adds: “I think there is a limit to how much vegetable oil you can grow, in the way there is a limit to how many wind turbines you can put on the land. “When I started in this 20 years ago my friends and family thought I was mad, but I’ve seen all the other renewables grow from being fringe interests “I don’t see vegetable oil as a cure-all, but 1ff could be a part of making five per cent of the country’s oil consumption be from a renewable source, I would be very pleased.”
More infrrmation from Jan’s Vegoil Car website at wwwgeocities. comlvegoilcar/index. html
and, on fuel duties, from
www. hmce. gov. uk/business/othe rta.xes/roadfuels. htm
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