When Dr Rudolph Diesel demonstrated his newly-invented diesel engine in 1900 at the World Exhibition, he used fuel derived from peanut oil. Now a new device, about the size of a dustbin on wheels, enables drivers of diesel cars to produce their own legal, duty-free bio-fuel from recycled cooking oil. The ‘Fuelpod’ is so efficient, it can pay for itself within about a year. It sounds like a great idea and when I got the information sent to me at work, I thought I'd share it here!
The Fuelpod is designed to recycle cooking oils and is therefore environmentally friendly, unlike biofuels made from farmed crops, which have negative impacts on food supplies and rainforests. This week, Jean Ziegler, the UN's rapporteur on the Right to Food, described farmed biofuels as "a crime against humanity" because they divert food from the poor to provide fuel for the rich.
For more information on the Fuelpod, visit: www.greenfuels.co.uk
It is heartening to see that both the European Commission and the UK government are rethinking their targets on biofuels.
Interesting - I thought you just had to filter cooking oil to make it work in a diesel engine. Is that what this Fuelpod is, just a big ol' filter?
ReplyDeleteThe people who argued against food-to-fuel, and were dismissed out of hand, were obviously right all along. Between that experience, and the Huge! New! Oil! Discoveries! that you never hear about again after a few weeks, I have to wonder whether "they" are trying to just lull us into thinking the Problem is Being Taken Care Of so we don't demand real changes.
I agree with Farfetched and love the idea of the Fuelpod. I'm going to research it further. Cheers.
ReplyDeleteI saw a newsbroadcast about something similar last year on the student news show the school where I teach uses. There was a segment on a teenage boy in the American Midwest who'd converted his car to run on used cooking oil donated from fast food chains.
ReplyDeletecool, it'd be great to have a biofuel car. my friend converted his van... if i remember rightly his is part diesel, part biofuel, i think. it's really funny when he drives off because it smells like a kitchen with hot fat cooking! cool though, and a good idea :)
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