A HIGH Wycombe pair have devised a machine that converts cooking oil into fuel and now hope to sell their idea to a television panel of top businessmen and women.

Friends Stephen Wood, 38, and Keith Woodfield, 44, are bidding to demonstrate their invention on BBC2's Dragon's Den.

The show sees would-be entrepreneurs attempting to pitch their ideas to a panel of business people. If they succeed they get financial backing. The pair have already auditioned for the series, but programme makers have blocked any leak of the result.

The men designed the machine in their spare time after running their vehicles on biodiesel fuel, created from cooking oil. They decided it would be more cost effective to make their own fuel.

Mr Wood, a small works builder from Whitelands Road, High Wycombe, said that millions of litres of oil, used by chip shops and pubs, was just wasted. The discarded oil could be turned into fuel using their machine.

The pair created Woody's Green Machine' after Mr Woodfield, a toolmaker, carried out internet research and found that existing machines often do not complete the whole process of converting the oil into fuel and not enough to fill a car engine.

Their machine cleans and dries the oil by a 24-hour process, and converts it into biodiesel.

Mr Wood said if someone owned one of the machines they are allowed 2,500 litres of chip oil tax free by the government at the moment, enough to run a car on an average mileage for a year.

He said: "We've been making them for friends and family and we are just making a few more - about seven - at the moment."

The pair have already sold some machines on internet auction site ebay for £850.

They have also sent machines to Wales, Ireland, Milton Keynes and Warwick and hope it will become their full-time profession.

Once they find out if they make the show they plan to develop their project into a family business.

Mr Woodfield, a married father-of-two from Pinewood Road, High Wycombe, said: "My parents would like a machine but they haven't had one because we've not had one long enough to hold on to.

"My sons are very supportive. One is going to build a website and the other is going to do some advertising."