Selecting and buying fuelGood old Rudolf Diesel designed his engine to run on practically any oil. It was only when the petroleum industry came up with their heavy oil petroleum by-product that we saw DERV (diesel engine road fuel) appear on the market. Since this is made alongside petroleum (i.e. they are both elements of the same broken down crude oil) then it made sense for the industry to produce and sell them side by side. Incidentally that's why we have a glut of petroleum gas at the moment too - this is being liquified (compressed) and sold as the new green fuel but watch out because supplies are limited by the amount of petroleum being processed so you can expect to see prices rise when the market's reached saturation.
So back in 1900 when Mr.Diesel was showing off his engine at the World Trade Exhibition in Paris he had it running on Peanut oil. He also predicted that vegetable oil would one day be as significant as petroleum oil as a fuel.
In practical terms here in the UK we have a limited number of practical choices.
The majority of vegetable oil production in the UK comes from the oilseed rape plant - these are the huge yellow fields we see in spring and early summer spreading across the countryside. This is then, not surprisingly the chapest to buy here. Best deals at the moment are in Tesco and Kwik Save where you can buy 3 litre containers for £1.11 (that's 37p/litre).
Sunflower oil is also fairly good value but the best price I've found for this is 45p/litre. This comes from France.
Surprisingly buying vegetable oil in bulk is more expensive than the cheapest supermarket prices. Typically you'll pay between 40p and 50/litre for fresh oil from a bulk supplier (i.e. in 20 litre containers) - this price is often delivered to your door.
If you're into the technology to save money then you'll have to use waste oil. The price for this is currently around 15p/litre filtered (ready to use) or 7p/litre unflitered.
Getting hold of filtered used oil can be difficult. Filtering it yourself can be a bigger hassle which is why I'm trying to get as many people together as possible to help with regular supplies of fuel and setting up centralised drop off and filtering points. If you'd like to register yourself then drop me a line at tansley_uk@hotmail.com and tell me which city, town or village you live in - I don't want to have to register as a keeper of a database so I just need to know roughly where you are and if you'd mind if people near you contacted you. I would be a central buying/co-ordinating facility and I'd build on my existing relationships with the vegetable oil network.
Don't forget you need to pay duty if you're going to use this fuel on the roads. See the section on the web site which deals with Legal issues - tax on fuel in the UK but as a rule of thumb you need to add 46p/litre to the price as duty (at the moment).
Many British fish and chip shops use animal fats for frying or something called Palm oil. Neither of these is particularly useful. You can use Palm oil but its solid at room temperature so you need a system with a heated fuel tank and you need to be planning fairly long journeys to justify heating up all that oil. My feeling is that its best to avoid these. If you have a strong desire to utilise Palm oil them drop me a line (at tansley_uk@hotmail.com)and I'll tell you what to do.