I've looked into the cooking oil thing a little and this is what I've found.
First of all, running a diesel engine on cooking oil isn't a very different concept from biodiesel and there are a number of designs out there to process used fryer oil into biodiesel
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Biodiesel from used oil and pressed fresh from soybeans is a good alternative to regular diesel in the sense that it reduces our dependence on oil and is greenhouse-gas-neutral, meaning that whatever greenhouse gasses it contributes to the atmosphere were pulled out very recently by the plants that produced that oil, unlike fossil fuels. So from a Global Warming perspective and a Foreign Oil perspective, it's good.
The one big concern is that burning oil and biodiesel generates huge quantity of oxides of nitrogen, which are serious pollutants and terrible human health threats. It's possible to modify the engines and carburetors to reduce the pollution levels, but you can't eliminate them as far as I know. So it isn't 100% good. And if too many people start using these fuels without modification, the pollution could be pretty bad. As a result, in the US at least, the EPA has started looking at regulating the use of those fuels.
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