• Question: can you run a car on chip fat

    Asked by ashley to Alastair, Emma, Hywel, Keith, Vicki on 16 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Hywel Vaughan

      Hywel Vaughan answered on 16 Jun 2010:

      Hi Ashley,
      This depends on the engine you use. A traditional petrol engine – no, but with a diesel engine it is entirely possible. Biodiesel (based on vegetable oil) can be created from a whole range of different fats, including chip fat. The main disadvantage is that it can be quite hard to source the amount you need to sustain a traditional car…

    • Photo: Alastair Sloan

      Alastair Sloan answered on 16 Jun 2010:

      Yes – its called biodiesel. How good it is for a conventional engine though is another question. You would need a diesel engine and there are current processes to purify chip fat to make it useful as a fuel for cars

    • Photo: Keith Brain

      Keith Brain answered on 16 Jun 2010:

      I understand that some cars can run on filtered chip fat. Chip fat isn’t chemically very different from petrol – both have mixtures of long chains of carbon atoms (along with hydrogen, oxygen and some other bits and pieces), and both originally came from plant sources (although in the case of petrol that was a very long time ago …).

    • Photo: Vicki Stevenson

      Vicki Stevenson answered on 16 Jun 2010:

      if the chip fat is filtered and refined it can be used to run a diesel car. Don’t try it with fat straight from the chip fan and really don’t try it on a petrol car!

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