The German Car Blog reports on a German company that created an Audi A3 racer designed to run on salad oil, which it will display at the Frankfurt show. Powered by 1.9-liter TDI, converted to biodiesel for around $3,000, the prototype A3 goes from zero to 62mph (100km/h) in an altogether respectable 6.5 seconds, though it slugs down around 10 liters of oil per 62 miles. Of course, for races, drivers will likely opt for Extra Virgin. [Our buddy, Nicholas notes that vegetable oil and biodiesel are separate fuels. There are two ways to go, he says, "A) Convert the car to run on pure vegetable oil. This requires a new tank, tank heaters, new fuel lines, etc etc etc. Such vehicles, beacuse of the higher solidifying point of the vegetable oil, still have to ues conventional diesel to start up and warm up; or, B) Convert the veggie oil to biodiesel and run it in an unmodified diesel. Read on after the jump.]
On (Spike TV's) "Trucks" a couple of weeks ago, the host showed a small (~40 gallon at a time, ~1 day (mostly automated) processing to create a batch) home-scale reactor. The cost of the reactor was something like $3k.
Audi A3: Salad oil race car! [The German Car Blog]
Related:
Will Scrounge for Fuel: More on Cooking-Oil Cars [internal]