Poo-Powered Cars: University of Warwick Turns Sewage Into Race Track Fuel
From the flush of a toilet to the race track – students at the University of Warwick have developed a poo-powered motorsports car using sewage-derived hydrogen. Sustainability has become an important topic in motorsport, particularly within the FIA. In response, Formula 1’s 2026 regulations will introduce a new power unit designed to run entirely on sustainable fuels, with the sport aiming to reach Net Zero Carbon by 2030.
The first push towards sustainability doesn’t always come from Formula 1’s biggest players. Sometimes, it takes outside-the-box thinking – like that of the students at the University of Warwick.
In addition to a wing mirror made from beetroot waste and a steering wheel made entirely of biosource materials, the Waste2Race Le Mans Prototype class 3 car is built from spare and unused parts – materials that would have otherwise been discarded or burned.
Professor Kerry Kirwan, head of the Sustainable Materials and Manufacturing Research Group at WMG and Warwick’s Deputy Pro-Vice Chancellor, explains: “We aren’t trying to tell Formula 1 how they should do things.” The purpose of the project is to shine a light on innovative cleantech ideas that have the potential to transform the market. The Waste2Race project does just that by showing how these materials perform in extreme environments.
“The motorsport angle is actually because it’s a really high impact, highly challenging area for these sorts of materials. So if we can demonstrate them in those areas, we can prove them anywhere. That’s really what it’s about,” says Professor Kirwan.
In 2009, Professor Kerry Kirwan was part of a research group that built a Formula 3 car fuelled by chocolate and vegetable oil. Through this project, the group discovered new uses for recycled materials apart from just aerodynamic purposes. “But we subsequently found out that those materials were absolutely brilliant for crash structures and things like that. We’re making crash structures for this new car using recycled materials; they perform brilliantly. So that’s a major step up, obviously—taking things to another level of critical safety features with more sustainable materials.”
“It is about the environment, but it’s not just about the environment”, he explains. Besides the sustainability impact, professor Kirwan reminds us of the economic and innovative aspect of the research: “There’s economic opportunity and there are jobs there. There are all sorts of skills development”.
“People actually are demanding it – products made from recycled materials – rather than sort of shying away from it”, affirms the professor
The Waste2Race car was showcased at the Festival of Innovation, held in celebration of the 60th anniversary of the University of Warwick. It was also shortlisted for the Autosport Awards in the Pioneering and Innovation category.
For Professor Kirwan, the most meaningful aspect of the research project is the energy surrounding it. “This car is special, it really is.” He highlights the student involvement and impact of their contribution: “When people come and see it, it literally makes you smile because it is just a figure of magnificence and beauty, but it’s brilliant innovation and brilliant engineering.”
“The beauty of this car is that it won’t be fixed, so we will carry on adding, testing, and developing. But also, we are encouraging our collaborators, colleagues, and anyone else to come and bring them to the car, and let’s see how things work. So that’s the idea of this car. It’s about performance, but it’s also an asset for our local, regional, and national companies to bring green tech, and we’ll try it out for them and see how it performs.”
The research group expects to complete the LMP3 prototype by late summer and started to think about car testing and aims to break a land speed record. “I mean, the numbers say we’ve got something that’s going to be very, very quick.” summarises professor Kerry Kirwan. “So we’re looking at land speed records, but we need to understand what we’re looking at, at which land speed record we could go for. Because it’s such a unique thing. Imagine, land speed records tend to sit around a standard that has been set, and we’re not quite sure of where shall we fit.”
