Egyptian engineering students build a machine that produces fuel from used car tyres

 A group of Egyptian students have built a machine they say can produce **fuel** from worn-out vehicle tyres, after big rises in energy prices as part of recent economic reforms.

[caption id=“attachment_3973735” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Engineering students, Mostafa Saeed Ali and Mohamed Amr cut up car tires in Cairo. Reuters.[/caption]

The device heats the tyres until they reach evaporation point. The vapour then enters a condenser.

The product is “very similar in properties to pure diesel and the carbon or black coal is just left inside the container,” said Mohamed Saeed Ali, one of 12 students who worked on the machine as a graduation project.

The students are currently searching for investors for their project.

“Instead of polluting the environment, we recycle them (the tyres) properly in an eco-friendly manner,” Saeed said.

Egypt raised fuel prices by up to 50 percent in June as a condition of a $12 billion **International Monetary Fund** programme the country signed last year.

This report comes weeks after a Kenyan company decided to go to unusual lengths by using human faeces to manufacture briquettes for use for use in cooking and heating. The fuel is made by workers from the Nakuru Water and Sanitation Services Company, who dry it, treat it in a kiln and carbonize it with sawdust at 300 degrees Celsius (572 degrees Fahrenheit), and eventually press it into balls that are then sold by the kilo. The production process also removes harmful pathogens and, of course, the unpleasant smell. With inputs from Reuters