Did you know that you can convert your car to run on pure vegetable oil? It’s true, with all the buzz about bio-fuel development, there are vegetable oil converter kits readily available for diesel engines right now. Vegetable oil converter kits typically include a heated secondary fuel tank, in addition to your tank for diesel, and all the wires, hoses and controls needed for a successful conversion to vegetable oil as fuel. One of the biggest benefits associated with vegetable oil as fuel is that burning vegetable oil produces ZERO carbon emissions. For those trying to reduce or even negate their personal carbon emissions, this is a big plus. Another benefit of running your car on vegetable oil is that waste oil will work. Properly filtered waste oil from restaurants is just as effective in a vegetable oil powered engine as new vegetable oil. And, what’s even better is that most restaurants will gladly give away their waste oil and the five gallon containers it comes in, as it saves them from incurring disposal costs. Remember, vegetable oil fuel conversion kits only work with diesel engines, and your engine must be relatively new (made without rubber seals), because vegetable oil is a solvent which will eventually dissolve rubber. Vegetable oil fuel converter kits range in price from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand dollars. For more information about converting your car to run on vegetable oil, visit Grease Car.

You may have seen recent news articles about jatropha curcas, a tree which grows in several countries, including The Gambia, India and Indonesia. The seeds produced by the jatropha curcas tree contain up to 40% oil which some scientists think shows great potential as bio-fuel. It’s not just cars that could be potentially fueled with jatropha oil, which is actually poisonous to humans. According to a June 8 report by the Los Angeles Times, jatropha fuel will be tested in New Zealand this summer as jet fuel in an Air New Zealand 747 jumbo jet. Some believe jatropha fuel is a better bio-fuel alternative than bio-diesel, as it can be produced without the negative impact on the environment that bio-diesel is often criticized for. The seeds of the jatropha tree are pressed to obtain the oil, which can be done by machine or even by hand, similar to the pressing of olive oil. For more information about jatropha fuel, visit Jatropha World , an India-based organization dedicated to the promotion of jatropha as bio-fuel.