My brother told me about a recent appearance of Darryl Hannah on one of the late night shows where she was talking about various ecological/environmental stuff. One of the things she went into was the history of the diesel engine. I had no idea, but apparently, the fellow who invented it, Rudolph Diesel, invented it to be run exclusively off of vegetable oil - specifically peanut oil. The intention was farmers would be able to basically grow their own fuel on their farms, and then power their vehicles with their crops, helping make them more self-sufficient. Totally ingenious.

From History of Diesel Engine:

“Diesel demonstrated his engine at the Exhibition Fair in Paris, France in 1898. This engine stood as an example of Diesel’s vision because it was fueled by peanut oil - the ‘original’ biodiesel. He thought that the utilization of a biomass fuel was the real future of his engine. He hoped that it would provide a way for the smaller industries, farmers, and ‘commonfolk’ a means of competing with the monopolizing industries, which controlled all energy production at that time”

Of course, at some point, the oil industry co-opted this brilliant idea and flooded the market with petroleum based diesel, which was a byproduct of gasoline production, as I understand it. Certain types of diesel engines can still be run off of what they call “biodiesel” though. Or you can do some basic modifications to some diesel engines, which will basically let you use vegetable and animal oils to run your car.

One thing I’ve heard from a variety of sources is that you can cheaply purchase used fryer oils from fast food chains to use as fuel. Not really sure how you’d do that, but I think there are also some companies you can go through to do this. God knows how convenient that would really be, but it seems like its at least worth looking into, cause it would certainly be very sweet not to be stuffing more money down the gaping maw of oil companies and the wars which are waged on their behalf.