Alternative fuels

[ladylola]

Not the "can I use chip fat in my diesel tranny" question that's pretty much been done to death but something similiar.
We were talking about this in the pub recently and if I'm honest didn't know the answer so I thought I'll stick on the forum there's always someone who knows.
Petrol engined cars can be made to run on an alcohol petrol mix but is it legal in this country and what are the implications?
We know , Brazil went down this route many years ago to save the costs of importing oil. Ironically when oil was discovered in Brazil it turned out to be light crude suitable for petrol manufacture and not diesel so the brazilians diluted diesel with raw petrol thus making Brazil the only country in the world with inflammable diesel.
We seem to remember that distillation is illegal in the UK which would be a huge problem.
And we think that even using waste sugar to ferment the end result, i.e. ethanol, would be worth more than petrol so there wouldn't be any saving.
Any comments or theorys gladly recieved.

 

[nickso]

have a search, this has been mentioned in several threads on here.

 

[ladylola]

Mentioned yes , and I've searched and read what we could do or should do or maybe what we might do but not what we actually CAN do.

 

[ColJack]

the "petrol" engine was originally designed for running on alcohol..
the "diesel" engine was originally designed to be run on vegetable oil....

it's only the fact that a suitable fuel could be made relatively simply from oil that either was adapted to use petrol or diesel and since then that's became the norm thanks to the big oil companies..

 

[mointainwalker]

@ ladylola

Petrol engined cars can be made to run on an alcohol petrol mix but is it legal in this country and what are the implications

If tax has been paid on both components, then I can see no reason why it should be illegal.

The implications for your engine are that it has to be suitable/adapted for this new mixture .

When bio-fuels were added to petrol in certain countries, engines had to be adapted because the aggressive chemical components of the bio element attacked rubber seals and gaskets.