Chocs away
After 12 years of running vehicle-based overland expeditions, I drove across the Sahara in a chocolate-powered lorry in 2007. It was the start of a personal journey to reduce the environmental impact of my expeditions. Taking a lorry gave my team the capacity to carry more gear than we usually would. As it turned out, to achieve the world’s first audited carbon-negative expedition, we would need all of this extra equipment.
Biodiesel is the product of a reaction between oil and an alcohol. This is called transesterification. Chocolate contains cocoa butter (a solidified oil) and sugar, which can be distilled into an alcohol. By separating these two ingredients and then reacting them back together, it’s possible to create a biofuel that can be used in any unconverted diesel engine. It’s an odd thought that a 125-gram bar of chocolate contains all of the ingredients needed to power a car for about a kilometre.
We produced our fuel at an industrial biodiesel production plant in Preston. There are also domestic biodiesel processors available that allow people to make ‘home-brew’ biodiesel from waste cooking oil discarded by local chip shops. We took one of these units, a Fuelpod 2, on the trip to give to a local charity, the Mali-Folkecenter, so they could improve their expertise in biodiesel production.
Carrying all our fuel with us from the start meant that we had to use a lorry with the capacity to transport two tonnes of the stuff, as well as a four-wheel-drive vehicle for the final off-road section. We carried the fuel in two intermediate bulk containers (IBCs) – plastic cubes caged in an aluminium frame that each hold 1,000 litres of fluid.
Although they’re versatile, IBCs aren’t designed for use in transportation because of a lack of baffling. Consequently, the fluids can slosh around. This can result in dramatic handling consequences when cornering or braking. To counter this effect, we filled the containers with sections of gutter tubing, which created lots of randomly aligned barriers to calm the sloshing liquid.
Fuel’s gold
Moving fuel from one container to another, or to the main tank, was a constant challenge. By mounting the IBCs above the vehicle’s tank, we could let gravity do the work using the simple tap fitted to the containers. The most useful bit of kit on the trip proved to be a three-metre-long clear hose. Its generous 2.5-centimetre diameter meant we could move large volumes quickly, even when the fuel was cold and thick, while the transparent walls allowed us to monitor the fuel flow.
We also used biodiesel as our cooking fuel. This required us to transfer small amounts into our stove or onto the fireplace. The IBC taps were too crude to control the flow, so we experimented with a small pump powered by an electric drill. However, it didn’t self-prime, and only worked when the pump was already full of fluid. We also tried a bowl pump – a rubber ball with a pair of one-way valves. In the end, the easiest method was to create a siphon by sucking on the transparent hose. Keeping an eye on where the fuel is in the tube prevents you getting a mouthful of biodiesel. It’s vital to get the siphon working first time, otherwise you’ll have to put your lips around the tube’s end after it’s covered in a splattering of fuel from the first attempt.
Diesel and petrol are both horrible and unhealthy fluids to suck through a hose. Their fumes alone are enough to damage your brain cells and to set your stomach on edge. Chocolate diesel, although not exactly edible, is a little safer to work with. While siphoning it, I occasionally ended up with the taste in my mouth. It isn’t altogether unpleasant: with no traces of cocoa left, it tastes like sweet emulsion paint.
Any overland expedition requires a weighty pile of documentation. There were times when we wondered if our attempt to reduce carbon emissions wasn’t outweighed by the forest of paperwork requested by Moroccan customs officials. In an attempt to find the easiest path through their bureaucracy, we tried to declare the chocolate diesel as a fuel, then as organic matter, then as food and finally as waste material. It took six days for us to be allowed into Morocco. It wouldn’t have been possible without the help of the British Consul in Tangiers, who beat the Moroccans into submission with a barrage of faxes, official letterheaded paper and rubber stamps.
Disposable heroes
With just two people travelling in the lorry, there was no need to worry about lack of space or conserving weight. ‘If you think you’ll need it, you might as well bring it’ was our mantra, to the point where we even packed a spare four-wheel-drive vehicle.
As we would be returning by plane, most of the equipment we took was disposable. We chose gear that would make useful gifts for people in Mali. John Grimshaw, my co-driver, took an old mattress and slept outdoors most of the time, with just a warm sleeping bag and a Tuareg headscarf over his face to keep out the sand and dawn light. The mattress made the perfect thank-you gift for the night watchman who looked after the truck in Bamako.
When we were away from the towns, I would hitch my hammock between the truck and a suitable tree. It’s made from parachute silk, so it packs down small enough to fit into a pocket. Thanks to the way the hammock is tailored, it’s great for sleeping, and also makes a cosy armchair for two. Sleeping suspended provides comfort, warmth and the reassurance that you won’t be sharing your bed with any other creatures.
John also brought along an old mountain bike, which made it easy to run errands around towns where we would otherwise have had to wrestle the ten-metre-long lorry through diabolical traffic. When we split a coolant hose in the engine and lost all the radiator fluid, John cycled off with the broken part and teetered back 30 minutes later with 20 litres of water and a replacement hose.
We wired up a four-way adaptor to the cigarette lighter and had 12-volt power to run everything from lights, GPS receivers and MP3 players to camera chargers, a satellite phone and a laptop. I fitted the truck with two 80-amp-hour batteries so that even if we left the stereo on all night we would still have plenty of juice to start the engine in the morning.
Keep on truckin’
Lorry brakes work with compressed air. I attached an air line to the compressor tank so that we could inflate the tyres after a puncture. This also proved to be a great way of rekindling the campfire embers in order to provide some heat in the cold desert mornings.
The four-wheel-drives and the fuel containers were tied to the truck with ten-tonne ratchet straps. We also had a big bag of smaller straps, ropes and bungee cords – in many ways, these held the expedition together over the bumpy roads.
The low ground clearance on the truck meant that we couldn’t do the last 200 kilometres off-road to Timbuktu. That’s where the four-wheel-drives came in. Both vehicles have now been converted to left-hand drive and are being used to taxi people to and from Timbuktu.
Another way we cut the expedition’s carbon footprint was by using recycled vehicles. The truck and the two four-wheel-drives had been salvaged from scrap yards, which meant numerous breakdowns along the way. My philosophy with overland travel is to choose repairable equipment over supposedly ‘unbreakable’ gear, and this expedition took that ideal to new extremes. We also took professional-quality workshop tools – good tools are one of the few essentials you can’t find locally. It’s really worth investing in the best, not least because buying from trade suppliers is cheaper than buying DIY tools from a conventional high-street store.
A tarpaulin creates a pristine workshop floor on which you can crawl around and disassemble parts. Keeping things clean and dust-free when working on a vehicle means the difference between a long-lasting repair and a bodged job. Our roll of heavy-duty absorbent tissue was used every day, as was the bucket of industrial-strength alcohol wipes. These were perfect for cleaning engine parts and grubby hands. A powerful magnet in the shape of a broken car speaker is a great tool for finding spanners and bolts lost in the sand.
During the trip, we repaired the gear selector, the lift pump, the headlight electrics, the steering pump, a brake line, and a blown-out tyre. The lorry is now being used to transport flour and concrete around Burkina Faso.
Can a chocolate-powered expedition really be ‘carbon negative’?
Short of sitting in a cold, dark room while holding your breath, it’s impossible to do anything that is truly carbon neutral. Our expedition involved practical support for projects that will lead to reduced carbon emissions in the future, a process known as offsetting. In fact, our chocolate-powered journey was the first audited carbon-negative expedition, where the offsetting saves more than the expedition emitted.
There are offsetting companies that do the maths and offset your footprint on your behalf. In recent years, some of these schemes have been exposed as ineffective or even as scams, but there are reputable agencies out there that can help expeditions offset their emissions.For offsetting to really work, the carbon savings must be dependent on the money paid by you: if the saving would have happened anyway without your financial investment, then you’re not creating a new carbon saving. Of course, expeditions need to make every effort to cut their emissions before resorting to offsetting.
Chocolate diesel (and all biofuels, for that matter) has a low carbon footprint because most of the carbon dioxide emitted when it’s used was already in the atmosphere before being absorbed by the cocoa tree that produced the cocoa butter. By contrast, using fossil fuels takes carbon atoms stored underground in crude oil and adds them to the atmosphere, which results in a larger carbon footprint.
April 2009
Biodiesel is the product of a reaction between oil and an alcohol. This is called transesterification. Chocolate contains cocoa butter (a solidified oil) and sugar, which can be distilled into an alcohol. By separating these two ingredients and then reacting them back together, it’s possible to create a biofuel that can be used in any unconverted diesel engine. It’s an odd thought that a 125-gram bar of chocolate contains all of the ingredients needed to power a car for about a kilometre.
We produced our fuel at an industrial biodiesel production plant in Preston. There are also domestic biodiesel processors available that allow people to make ‘home-brew’ biodiesel from waste cooking oil discarded by local chip shops. We took one of these units, a Fuelpod 2, on the trip to give to a local charity, the Mali-Folkecenter, so they could improve their expertise in biodiesel production.
Carrying all our fuel with us from the start meant that we had to use a lorry with the capacity to transport two tonnes of the stuff, as well as a four-wheel-drive vehicle for the final off-road section. We carried the fuel in two intermediate bulk containers (IBCs) – plastic cubes caged in an aluminium frame that each hold 1,000 litres of fluid.
Although they’re versatile, IBCs aren’t designed for use in transportation because of a lack of baffling. Consequently, the fluids can slosh around. This can result in dramatic handling consequences when cornering or braking. To counter this effect, we filled the containers with sections of gutter tubing, which created lots of randomly aligned barriers to calm the sloshing liquid.
Fuel’s gold
Moving fuel from one container to another, or to the main tank, was a constant challenge. By mounting the IBCs above the vehicle’s tank, we could let gravity do the work using the simple tap fitted to the containers. The most useful bit of kit on the trip proved to be a three-metre-long clear hose. Its generous 2.5-centimetre diameter meant we could move large volumes quickly, even when the fuel was cold and thick, while the transparent walls allowed us to monitor the fuel flow.
We also used biodiesel as our cooking fuel. This required us to transfer small amounts into our stove or onto the fireplace. The IBC taps were too crude to control the flow, so we experimented with a small pump powered by an electric drill. However, it didn’t self-prime, and only worked when the pump was already full of fluid. We also tried a bowl pump – a rubber ball with a pair of one-way valves. In the end, the easiest method was to create a siphon by sucking on the transparent hose. Keeping an eye on where the fuel is in the tube prevents you getting a mouthful of biodiesel. It’s vital to get the siphon working first time, otherwise you’ll have to put your lips around the tube’s end after it’s covered in a splattering of fuel from the first attempt.
Diesel and petrol are both horrible and unhealthy fluids to suck through a hose. Their fumes alone are enough to damage your brain cells and to set your stomach on edge. Chocolate diesel, although not exactly edible, is a little safer to work with. While siphoning it, I occasionally ended up with the taste in my mouth. It isn’t altogether unpleasant: with no traces of cocoa left, it tastes like sweet emulsion paint.
Any overland expedition requires a weighty pile of documentation. There were times when we wondered if our attempt to reduce carbon emissions wasn’t outweighed by the forest of paperwork requested by Moroccan customs officials. In an attempt to find the easiest path through their bureaucracy, we tried to declare the chocolate diesel as a fuel, then as organic matter, then as food and finally as waste material. It took six days for us to be allowed into Morocco. It wouldn’t have been possible without the help of the British Consul in Tangiers, who beat the Moroccans into submission with a barrage of faxes, official letterheaded paper and rubber stamps.
Start the slideshow (12 pictures)
Disposable heroes
With just two people travelling in the lorry, there was no need to worry about lack of space or conserving weight. ‘If you think you’ll need it, you might as well bring it’ was our mantra, to the point where we even packed a spare four-wheel-drive vehicle.
As we would be returning by plane, most of the equipment we took was disposable. We chose gear that would make useful gifts for people in Mali. John Grimshaw, my co-driver, took an old mattress and slept outdoors most of the time, with just a warm sleeping bag and a Tuareg headscarf over his face to keep out the sand and dawn light. The mattress made the perfect thank-you gift for the night watchman who looked after the truck in Bamako.
When we were away from the towns, I would hitch my hammock between the truck and a suitable tree. It’s made from parachute silk, so it packs down small enough to fit into a pocket. Thanks to the way the hammock is tailored, it’s great for sleeping, and also makes a cosy armchair for two. Sleeping suspended provides comfort, warmth and the reassurance that you won’t be sharing your bed with any other creatures.
John also brought along an old mountain bike, which made it easy to run errands around towns where we would otherwise have had to wrestle the ten-metre-long lorry through diabolical traffic. When we split a coolant hose in the engine and lost all the radiator fluid, John cycled off with the broken part and teetered back 30 minutes later with 20 litres of water and a replacement hose.
We wired up a four-way adaptor to the cigarette lighter and had 12-volt power to run everything from lights, GPS receivers and MP3 players to camera chargers, a satellite phone and a laptop. I fitted the truck with two 80-amp-hour batteries so that even if we left the stereo on all night we would still have plenty of juice to start the engine in the morning.
Keep on truckin’
Lorry brakes work with compressed air. I attached an air line to the compressor tank so that we could inflate the tyres after a puncture. This also proved to be a great way of rekindling the campfire embers in order to provide some heat in the cold desert mornings.
The four-wheel-drives and the fuel containers were tied to the truck with ten-tonne ratchet straps. We also had a big bag of smaller straps, ropes and bungee cords – in many ways, these held the expedition together over the bumpy roads.
The low ground clearance on the truck meant that we couldn’t do the last 200 kilometres off-road to Timbuktu. That’s where the four-wheel-drives came in. Both vehicles have now been converted to left-hand drive and are being used to taxi people to and from Timbuktu.
Another way we cut the expedition’s carbon footprint was by using recycled vehicles. The truck and the two four-wheel-drives had been salvaged from scrap yards, which meant numerous breakdowns along the way. My philosophy with overland travel is to choose repairable equipment over supposedly ‘unbreakable’ gear, and this expedition took that ideal to new extremes. We also took professional-quality workshop tools – good tools are one of the few essentials you can’t find locally. It’s really worth investing in the best, not least because buying from trade suppliers is cheaper than buying DIY tools from a conventional high-street store.
A tarpaulin creates a pristine workshop floor on which you can crawl around and disassemble parts. Keeping things clean and dust-free when working on a vehicle means the difference between a long-lasting repair and a bodged job. Our roll of heavy-duty absorbent tissue was used every day, as was the bucket of industrial-strength alcohol wipes. These were perfect for cleaning engine parts and grubby hands. A powerful magnet in the shape of a broken car speaker is a great tool for finding spanners and bolts lost in the sand.
During the trip, we repaired the gear selector, the lift pump, the headlight electrics, the steering pump, a brake line, and a blown-out tyre. The lorry is now being used to transport flour and concrete around Burkina Faso.
Can a chocolate-powered expedition really be ‘carbon negative’?
Short of sitting in a cold, dark room while holding your breath, it’s impossible to do anything that is truly carbon neutral. Our expedition involved practical support for projects that will lead to reduced carbon emissions in the future, a process known as offsetting. In fact, our chocolate-powered journey was the first audited carbon-negative expedition, where the offsetting saves more than the expedition emitted.
There are offsetting companies that do the maths and offset your footprint on your behalf. In recent years, some of these schemes have been exposed as ineffective or even as scams, but there are reputable agencies out there that can help expeditions offset their emissions.For offsetting to really work, the carbon savings must be dependent on the money paid by you: if the saving would have happened anyway without your financial investment, then you’re not creating a new carbon saving. Of course, expeditions need to make every effort to cut their emissions before resorting to offsetting.
Chocolate diesel (and all biofuels, for that matter) has a low carbon footprint because most of the carbon dioxide emitted when it’s used was already in the atmosphere before being absorbed by the cocoa tree that produced the cocoa butter. By contrast, using fossil fuels takes carbon atoms stored underground in crude oil and adds them to the atmosphere, which results in a larger carbon footprint.
April 2009
 |
