Vegetable Oil as Car Fuel

Seema Patel — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 12:32:28 -0400

Managing Organization: Roy Dibley

Activity URL:

http://www.int.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=14&click_id=116&art_id=vn20060613105934225C865200

Activity Description:

Capetonian Roy Dibley runs his 1980s diesel Mercedes on used vegetable oil, collecting it from restaurants in and around Cape Town. Sometimes he pays for it (R1.50 a litre, which is its price as an additive to animal feed). Sometimes he gets it for nothing.

Dibley reckons it costs him about 50c a litre to filter it before he can put it in his tank - which explains the sticker on the rear of his Merc which announcess that he is running his car on fuel that costs R2 a litre, and that anyone interested in doing the same should ring his cellphone number.

Dibley is a qualified mechanical engineer who designs, builds and sells conversion kits for diesel engines to run on vegetable oil (after filtering) - used, or neat, straight out of the bottle.

The kits, which have been extensively tested in South Africa, are now available from Dibley, and he hopes they will prove a boon to farmers large and small, to operators of hotel courtesy buses and, as he puts it, small operators like plumbers and electricians.

One of his first kits, which he fitted to an electrician's 280KB diesel bakkie, is performing well. The success of these prototypes led to the formation of a business partnership between Dibley, Stuart Freedman (based in Britain) and Valentine Lefrère, an entrepreneur and venture capitalist. Dibley's vision of the product's potential is broader than the luxury market of campers, converted buses or diesel Winnebagos, if there are such things.

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Vegetable Oil as Car Fuel