It's like jelly. Well, actually, more like chewing gum.' As an experienced public speaker and award-winning television journalist, Briton Andy Pag doesn't usually have a problem with words. But he fumbles as he tries to describe the gloop that bungs up a motor when engine oil and cooking oil interact.
That's just one of a litany of mechanical problems Pag has faced as he journeys around the world in a 'biotruck' that runs on waste oil from restaurants - basically, chip fat. Pag is attempting to drive around the world producing no more than two tonnes of carbon emissions. For the mission, he bought a 22-year-old Mercedes-Benz 708D, formerly a 28-seater bus, he found in an English scrapyard.
Pag was in Hong Kong this week before flying to Los Angeles for the final leg of an epic journey that began in Britain in September 2009. He flew to Hong Kong from Bangkok, where his bus was loaded onto a container ship. He had hoped to join the ship rather than fly, but its captain wouldn't let him aboard for security reasons.
While the flights will have expanded the carbon footprint, Pag is philosophical. 'I'm not an environmental evangelist, I wanted to do it as an experiment.'
Pag is a seasoned traveller, having led overland trips across difficult terrain such as the Sahara Desert. He made headlines a few years ago when he took a team from London to Timbuktu in a van that ran on chocolate - out-of-date and misshapen waste from producers such as Mars. Then there was 'Grease to Greece' in the summer of 2008, a rally involving 10 cars racing from London to Athens with engines converted to take waste oil from restaurants and canteens.
At two metres tall, Pag needed a vehicle that he could stand up in and lie across to sleep for a trip of 38,000 kilometres running on old chip fat. He spend three months restoring the vehicle to ensure it was road legal and road safe. He then secured sponsors, including a company called TVT that converts exhaust systems. TVT installed particulate filters to capture much of the soot that would normally be produced when burning old cooking oil. The bus is able to cover five kilometres per litre, which is the same as it would on diesel, Pag says.
