BioBot: Make diesel, right now, in your kitchen

Most of us probably don’t drive diesel cars, but expect that to change in the coming years for a few reasons. Diesel engines last longer, don’t need spark plugs, are more efficient than gasoline engines, and most importantly, you can run a diesel engine on pretty much anything. Basically, if it’ll burn when you compress it, you can use it to run a diesel engine.

Which means, for example, you could turn that oil you just fried some chicken in into something to put in your car. And the BioBot will help.

It’s pretty straightforward. Once you’re done cooking, dump the oil into the BioBot’s chamber. Heat up the oil inside the tank while stirring it with the hand mixer. Then, you add sodium hydroxide to pull out the glycerin, then water to filter out any soap and other materials you might have made in the process.

It takes a while: This is the kind of thing you do on a weekend. But the fruits of your labors are four gallons of biodiesel. OK, so it won’t fill your tank entirely. And making sodium hydroxide is insanely risky, as it’s corrosive as hell. But as a concept, it shows how we may not have to make our own gas in the future.

BioBot [Official Site]