October 22, 2002	Tuesday	Sha’aban 15,1423

LONDON: Every week, a motorist in his Renault Laguna drives past several Shell and Esso garages and heads for one of Britain’s smallest oil companies, based in a shed on a trading estate near Doncaster, northern England.

He is met by Jane Myatt, the company’s all-in-one chief executive, head chemist, top engineer and saleswoman. She fills the car with 20 litres of diesel, takes the motorist’s money and then goes back to filtering old vegetable oil that has been used to fry fish and chips. Myatt’s company, Envirodiesel, is invisible to Shell, Esso and the big oil companies, but the fuel which she and two others make — “bio- diesel” — is taking off fast as it dawns on people that Britain’s estimated 30 million diesel engines could be run more efficiently, economically and ecologically sensitively on chip fat than on conventional petrol-based diesel.

Envirodiesel makes about 3,000 litres a week. “It’s not rocket science to make diesel from vegetable oils,” says Myatt, a trained chemist. “We collect the waste oil, clean it up, filter it, wash it, take out the contaminants — you can get anything from paper towels to fags and chips in it — then add methanol. The quantities have to be very precise to get it right, but it ends up clean and runny and then we wash it again and dry it. It can go straight in the engine.”

These are boom times for Britain’s few professional bio- diesel makers. The largest are making more than five million litres a year, the majority under 10,000 litres a week. Most are expanding fast and are selling it for a few pence cheaper per litre than normal diesel.

Meanwhile an unknown number of amateur backwoodsmen are making small quantities and Customs and Excise, the police, the environment agency and local authorities would like to meet them.

Evading fuel taxes can, say the authorities, lead to vehicles being impounded, pounds sterling 2,000 fines and prison. Ironically, the case this month of the police cracking down on the people of Llanelli who were dodging the 45 pence a litre tax by taking ordinary supermarket cooking oil and mixing it with a shot of methanol is thought to have helped popularise the legal purveyors of biodiesel.

The legal business, which mostly sells its fuel for as little as 63 pence a litre compared with 75 pence for petroleum-based fuel, attracts everyone from techno-enthusiasts to green messianics. All are united in being sniffy about the diesel sold by oil companies.

They call it “dino-diesel” (as in dinosaur) and they all rave about how their fuel is completely biodegradable, non-carcinogenic, non-mutagenic, non-allergenic and more energy efficient than the petrol equivalent.

“It reduces carbon monoxide by ten per cent and particulates by 50 per cent,” says a spokesman for British Allied Biodiesel Industries (UK). “Carbon dioxide increases by two per cent, but this doesn’t matter because the plants from which the oil came absorbed the carbon dioxide from the atmosphere when they were growing. This is carbon recycling.”

Nor are the makers over-fussy about the condition or provenance of the oil with which they start their production process. Cooked or uncooked, clean or dirty sunflower, rapeseed, soya, rape and olive oils are all good. Some say that a particular Chinese plant is best, others swear by a fast-growing algae.

They all hate the idea that almost all of Britain’s estimated annual 70 million litres of waste cooking oil goes to animal feed or is just chucked down the drain when it could be turned into cheap, efficient transport fuel.

Myatt prefers seed oils, but says she has had her generator running well on kebab fat from a local takeaway. The company has only 50 regular customers, but expects to expand soon to make more than a million litres a year. It is working on a plan with the supermarket group Asda to take its waste oil, turn it into engine fuel and sell it back to fuel the supermarket’s lorries.

All makers say demand for bio-diesel has soared since the British government gave a tax concession in July.

John Lancaster, head of Ebony Solutions in Northwich, Cheshire, says he could make — and sell — 100,000 litres a week, but is limited to 30,000 because he cannot get enough waste oil.

Bio-diesel is rapidly becoming the greens’ favourite fuel. Lili, a low impact, educational co-operative based in Buckinghamshire, southern England, offers weekend courses in how to make it. “The process is reasonably simple, but there are safety issues and I don’t recommend making it without training,” says John Halle who is hoping to set up a cooperative.

“Your car may have a distinct Saturday-night, sweet, chippy smell, but it’s better than dino-diesel,” he adds. “And the feeling of driving a car that is using recycled fuel is awesome.”—Dawn/The Guardian News Service.