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ATHENS, Greece: A group of British drivers on August 27 completed a
3,750-kilometer “Grease-to-Greece” expedition in an effort to
raise fuel-saving awareness aboard cars powered by vegetable oil,
organizers said.
Some of the nine cars used 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 gas 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 realize 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
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