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‘Greasers’ reach Athens in
frying oil-powered cars
ATHENS — A group of
Britons yesterday completed a 3,750-kilometre ‘Grease to Greece’ expedition
to raise fuel-saving awareness aboard cars powered by vegetable oil,
organisers said. Some of the nine cars were converted to run on purified
vegetable oil while others had standard engines using biodiesel that was
brewed overnight in a ‘fuel pod’ stored in a lorry accompanying the
expedition.
Instead of filling up at petrol stations, the expedition’s ‘frybrid’ cars
ran on used frying oil donated by restaurants and cafes along the route.
“A lot of people don’t realise that biodiesel, when made properly, will run
in any diesel engine,” noted expedition leader Andy Pag, 34, a webcasting
specialist and trained engineer, who says he got the idea in a road trip
from London to Capetown with his wife three years ago.
“We wanted to see if it’s possible to do something with biofuels,” he said.
“We had a lot of breakdowns (en route) but we managed to fix everything.”
Setting off from London on August 16, the expedition crossed France,
Belgium, Germany, Austria, Italy, Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegro, Albania and
arrived in Athens on August 27.
On one occasion when the team was pulled over by German traffic police,
their press cuttings proved more valuable than passports, noted Peg, who
last year led an expedition to Timbuktu on a truck powered by chocolate soya
oil. His next project involves circumnavigating the globe with cars running
on cooking oil and a small aircraft using an aviation fuel made from plastic
bags. “It’s quite geeky, essentially it’s like taking the molecules apart
and building a new jigsaw with them to create fuel molecules,” he said. —
AFP |
