Incredibly it is possible to run a car using fat that’s been used for cooking chips. Although it’s a little bit more complicated than it sounds.
It’s all to do with vegetable oil. You see, when chips are cooked in places like your local Fish and Chip shop, there’s lots of left over cooking oil.
Now, a little while ago some clever people worked out that cars designed to use diesel fuel could be powered by this vegetable oil – although with a few important tweaks!
To start with, you don’t just pour chip oil into the fuel tank. You firstly have to heat the oil up to steam off any water that might be in it. Some chemicals are then added and the oil is then left to separate out into layers.
It then needs to be filtered before it can be used to remove impurities and any old chips that may still be in there! This is definitely a job for the grown-ups and even they need to be very careful. Once all of that’s done, the fuel can then be used in your car.
This kind of fuel is known as a biofuel because it comes from living matter – that’s the crops that were used to make the vegetable oil in the first place. Many people think that biofuels like these are good for the environment because it’s basically recycling oil that would otherwise just be thrown away.
Remember though, hot oil can give you nasty burns so stay safe and leave this sort of thing to your parents!
