Chocolate-Fueled Car

Think that chocolate makes the world go round? Well soon it could make your car go round. It turns out that chocolate waste can be made into fuel. All those deformed, discarded Easter eggs and expired chocolate bars that Cadbury throws out could finally have a home other than the landfill! There are several ways which this could be done. One way is to have bacteria convert the chocolate into burnable hydrogen gas; the other is to turn it into bio-diesel.

Feeding chocolate to E. Coli bacteria would ferment the chocolate waste and produce hydrogen gas. Still in its initial stages, the research shows great promise. A cheap alternative to fossil fuels, this method reduce waste organically and economically. In laboratory tests, chocolate produced enough hydrogen to power a fuel cell that ran a small fan. The only waste it created was water.

In December 2007, Andy Pag and John Grimshaw journeyed 4500 miles in a chocolate-powered vehicle. Made from 8,818 pounds of chocolate misshapes--the equivalent of 80,000 chocolate bars--the chocolate biodiesel powered them from England to Timbuktu. The chocolate-derived ethanol was blended with vegetable oil and the Britons used 396 gallons (2000 litres) to complete their journey. Not only was the expedition carbon neutral, it was carbon negative. Ultimately, they used less carbon on their voyage than they would have if they’d stayed at home.

The fuel is made from cocoa butter but sadly, does not look or smell like chocolate.

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