Biodiesel

Biodiesel is a nontoxic alternative to diesel, obtained from vegetable oils such as corn and soy oils and has been approved by the Environmental Protection Agency. As biodiesel is obtained from natural sources it is fully biodegradable and a source of sustainable fuel which burns with clean emissions, significantly reducing contributing factors to global warming. Normal fuel has been attributed with releasing carcinogens (cancer-causing agents) into the air that we breathe in on congested city streets. Biodiesel, however, emits 85% less carcinogens than conventional fuel and fulfils the prerequisites of the California Air Resources Board after successfully achieving the standard of every health effects test required by the Clean Air Act.

So, is it an optimistic fallacy that your car can run on used chip fat? The truth is in the science. Vegetable oils or in fact, any fats, can be separated into glycerine and methyl esters through quite an easy chemical process which can easily be carried out domestically by anybody with a basic knowledge of chemistry. Basically, methanol, which is an alcohol, is able to chemically separate the methyl esters from vegetable oils, with glycerine as a by-product. Methyl esters are biodiesel – so, yes, you can run your car on vegetable oils if your car is a diesel car.

If you are being truly ‘green’ and into recycling in a big way, then the glycerine which is also produced is one of the basics for making soap. In effect, therefore, you can make your own biodiesel and your own soap from used cooking oil. Not a bad exchange! The purists would point out that biodiesel is more expensive, per gallon, than conventional fuels due to the time and expense of growing the crops in the first place and shipping costs to get the biodiesel to where you want it to be. This is rather like splitting hairs as the basic idea behind biodiesel is to make your own from your own left-over cooking oils and there are many websites which give you step-by-step recipes on how to make your own biodiesel. It is not a difficult process if you follow each step exactly as it is given and there is certainly nothing magical about it.

While home-produced biodiesel may be considered as illegal in some countries, in the UK many local authorities have set up distribution centres for potential domestic biodiesel-makers to obtain large quantities of used cooking oil and manufacture of biodiesel domestically is actively encouraged, with many units on sale to make the manufacturing process simpler. Other countries point to the fact that domestically made biodiesel does not meet rigorous ‘standards’ and therefore discourage its private manufacture, despite the fact that biodiesel is non-toxic, non-hazardous and completely safe. Nobody is going to actively damage their vehicles by using cooking oil which has not been properly converted into methyl esters – and that is its only hazard. Governments are more concerned with loss of revenue.