Chip shops offer fat chance for fry-drive revolution
Waste oil could fuel many more cars, if only there were more of it
John Vidal, Monday October 21, 2002, The Guardian
... Inventor driven by a humanitarian vision
In 1893, the German inventor Rudolph Diesel published a paper called The Theory and Construction of a Rational Heat Engine. It described a revolutionary engine in which air would be compressed by a piston to a very high pressure, causing a high temperature.
Diesel was motivated by a humanitarian vision. He thought that his highly efficient engine, which was adaptable in size and could use various fuels, would allow threatened independent craftsmen and artisans to take on the large industries which virtually monopolised the dominant power source of the time - the expensive, fuel-wasting steam engine.
Diesel expected his engine would be powered by vegetable oils such as hemp and seed oils. At the 1900 World's Fair in Paris, he ran them on peanut oil.
By then Diesel was a millionaire and his engines were used to power pipelines, boats, electric and water plants, cars, trucks and ships.
He died mysteriously in 1913 on a steamer crossing from Antwerp to Harwich. While his death has never been fully explained, conspiracy theorists believe he was assassinated by the German government, which was preparing for war. Diesel was friendly with many of his British counterparts and, shortly after his death, Germany introduced the diesel-engined U-boats which terrorised the Atlantic. This was not technology they would have wanted to share.
Within a few years, the petroleum companies had monopolised the market for cheap fuel and it was largely forgotten that all diesel engines could be powered on just about anything.
