Nov 3, 2006

1893 Bio-peanut oil as a tractor fuel?

 
How’s this for irony? In 1893 Rudolf Diesel fired up his first engine, though not on the petroleum-based fuel that was later to inherit his name it ran on peanut oil.
For the good (and visionary) Herr Docktor had recognised that plant oils could manage the simultaneous trick of providing power and keeping farmers in business, though the cheapness and availability of fossil oil was soon to scupper that idea.
 
But you can’t keep a good fuel down. Encouraged by the EU, governments are waking up to its potential - with the result that now, a mere 113 years later, Dr Diesel’s German homeland is Europe’s top biodiesel producer.