Motorists using cooking oil as fuel

Cooking oil has become substitute for diesel due to acute shortages in Malawi. Motorists said the food product is much more effective and efficient for their engines. The southern African country is experiencing shortage in gas supply as a result of a rise in international transportation costs.

Unknowingly and desperately, a man working in the capital city, David Chiumia discovered a short cut to the problem when he ran his diesel engine on coking oil. “It started when I got stuck at one filling station some miles in the outskirts of the city, I looked around me and nobody was watching me, I remembered what I read somewhere about cooking oil and bio-fuel, I bought a litre and poured into my tank,” he confessed.

“I thought my engine would fail but lo, I run much faster than I could with diesel,” he said. He said after this, he bought more cooking oil and he dropped his kids to school.

“Cooking oil is even economic because one litre carries me 15 kilometers while diesel, one is equal to only 10 in my Mitsubishi Lancer,” Chiumia claimed.

A lecturer in Motor Vehicle Mechanics at University of Malawi, Steve Sabola, said he was not surprised with the experience. “It is very possible because cooking oil and diesel work in the same way, diesel engines compress hot air to burn fuel and cooking oil also burns,” he said. Sabola also said there are no dangers for motorists to use cooking oil adding that it is environmentally friendly.