Dakar Rally-Toyota starts w/ cooking oil fuel

[shogun]

Former Japanese F-1 driver to race Dakar rally on 'tempura oil'

TOKYO (AP): A Japanese research team plans to create environmental awareness by entering a race car in the Dakar rally that runs on cooking oil used to fry tempura.

The turbo-engine Land Cruiser 100, sponsored by Toyota, will be the first car completely powered by biodiesel to enter the prestigious event, said Hidefumi Onaka, a lecturer at the Osaka Sangyo University, which helped test the fuel and provided technical support.

"We want to show what tempura oil can achieve, as a way to raise environmental awareness,'' Onaka said this week. "We're not doing it just for fun, so we decided to enter an internationally acclaimed event and appeal to the world.''

Driving the car will be former Formula-One racer Ukyo Katayama.

The Dakar rally starts in Lisbon, Portugal in January next year. The race tests man and machine over 10,000 kilometers (6,200 miles) of rough terrain and parched desert to Dakar, the capital of Senegal, the westernmost country on the African continent.

Onaka said the team will need about 10,000 liters (2,600 gallons) of tempura oil, which will be donated by students, the school cafeteria, as well as neighborhood restaurants. He said it will be reprocessed by biofuel maker Revo International Co. in Kyoto.

Katayama's racing unit, Team UKYO, and Osaka Toyota Corp., a Toyota-affiliated regional car dealer and repair service provider, are also taking part.

Biodiesel fuel is still rare in Japan, though it is used in some buses, garbage trucks and other vehicles in several cities.

"The idea is to drive on biomass fuel, which is easier on the environment, over the dessert that is severely affected by global warming,'' Katayama wrote recently on his Internet blog. "I want to be the first to complete the Dakar rally on non-fossil fuel.''

Although biodiesel fuel generates about 20 percent less power than regular diesel oil, it creates less black smoke and almost no sulfur oxides, a chemical that causes acid rain, Onaka said.

If cost-cutting is achieved through mass-production, tempura oil could be the future fuel for resource-poor Japan, he said. A small drawback, however, is its odor.

"The smell isn't as appetizing as tempura,'' he said. "After intensive fuel testing in my lab, I had heartburn and didn't even want to look at tempura for a few days.''