First Biofuel Car

Even though scientists E. Duffy and J. Patrick experimented with biofuels as early as 1853, the first engine created to use biofuel was by Rudolph Diesel. In fact, Rudolph Diesel showed the first biofuel car engine in Augsburg, Germany on August 10, 1893.

Since then, August 10 has been known as International Biodiesel Day. It must be noted that British inventors Herbert Akroyd Stuart and Charles Richard Binney had come out with a similar engine about the same time as Rudolph Diesel.

In 1900, Rudolph Diesel demonstrated his first biofuel car engine at the Paris, France World Fair. The car engine ran on peanut oil. The biofuel diesel inventor was awarded the Grand Prix, which was the highest prize attainable at the World Fair.

According to Diesel in a 1912 speech, "The use of vegetable oils for engine fuels may seem insignificant today, but such oils may become, in the course of time, as important as petroleum and the coal-tar products of the present time."

The diesel engine, because of its weight was first used for stationary applications such as pumping fluids. It was also used to motivate ships and submarines. In 1923, the first diesel truck was tested by Daimler, MAN and Benz.

In the 1920's engineers redesigned the biofuel engine to run better on petroleum since oil was cheap and in abundance. In 1933 the first biofuel car, the Citroën Rosalie (pictured above) was produced. It was also the first diesel car, passenger vehicle and most models by that time ran on petroleum, though a few people used different kinds of vegetable oils for their cars.

G. Chavanne at the University of Brussels, Belgium, was granted a patent for the transesterification of vegetable oils in 1937. The process of alcoholysis, ethanol and methanol were mentioned in the patent. Automotive historians regard this as the first formal production of what we know as biodiesel today.