Scientists have come up with a formula to make fat into a biofuel as good as diesel and much more efficiently.
Researchers from King’s College London and the Brazilian Biorenewables National Laboratory, used enzymes to break down fatty acids in cooking oil into alkenes, the building block of fuels like petrol and diesel.
The scientists hope the new renewable fuel, which can be made using leftover food waste, like chip fat, can cut fossil fuel usage.
Biofuels are made from renewable organic material that comes from plants or animals, like vegetable oil. Fuels made from such food waste cut greenhouse gases by up to 94%.
Those which can directly replace petrol or diesel in conventional combustion engines are a sustainable alternative to fossil fuels, however they contain a lot of oxygen molecules which burn inefficiently.
This low fuel efficiency has previously prevented widespread usage. To compensate and create diesel equivalents more raw materials are needed, pushing up costs to two times that of fossil fuels.
To create a more efficient fuel with more active alkene in, the researchers modified an enzyme to break down fatty acids found in food waste and extract the oxygen found within.
That left a fuel almost as good in efficiency as diesel.
Dr Alex Brogan, Senior Lecturer in Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry at King’s College London said “What we’ve created is the chemical equivalent of the fossil fuels we’re using every day, meeting all the standards the chip shop fat of yesteryear could not.”
Work now begins on trying to refine the process which is also less harmful in terms of pollutants used to make fuel.
