• Question: do you think that running cars on chip fat will work?

    Asked by kieran98 to David, James, Mike, Suze, Will on 14 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Suze Kundu

      Suze Kundu answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      Ooh, don’t talk about chips! I’m starving, and chips with salt and vinegar would be PERFECT right now!

      Chip fat, or oil, is a whole load of really long molecules. When yor burn these, each time a little bond in the molecule breaks, energy is released. As a result, there is loasd of energy in oil, and therefore in chip fat.

      You could potentially run a car on it, but the engine would have to be built in such a way to burn the fuel efficiently, and safely, and get rid of the products of burning from the system. So, if you fancy a project, there’s a pretty good one to be getting on with! Only if I can eat the chips though 😛

    • Photo: William Eborall

      William Eborall answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      Alternatively you could turn the chip fat into biodiesel and use it in an unmodified diesel engine. This would work (and is done by some people) but there probably isn’t enough chip fat in the world to run all of our cars and fry our chips! And I’m not giving up chips!

    • Photo: David Ingram

      David Ingram answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      It can be done – a group of taxi drivers in Manchester collected chip fat from fish and chip shops and reprocessed it into bio-deisel in their garage. It worked quite well but they still had to pay the duty on the fuel 🙁

      p.s. the taxi’s smelt a bit odd

    • Photo: James Marrow

      James Marrow answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      Yes – we need to reduce the amount of energy we waste, and chip fat is wasted energy! There are lots of ways we can make fuel from biological waste material.

      My son’s science project this year was to make bio-ethanol. We made turnip wine to create alcohol, and then distilled it to get it so it would burn. It did (RIOCKET FUEL?) – I sipped a bit and it tasted like turnip vodka – urghh 🙁

    • Photo: Mike Dodd

      Mike Dodd answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      While it is still cheap to get hold of chip fat from fish and chip shops, I think that running cars on chip fat will work. Once they people figure out that a lot of money can be made from selling chip fat, then it will stop being practical and not work because it will be the same price as petrol. Alternative energy sources are differently the only real way forward.

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