Straight Vegetable Oil (SVO) As Fuel

You may have heard of compressed natural gas as alternative fuel before, and you might have even heard about biodiesel as fuel before as well, but have you ever considered using straight vegetable oil (SVO) as an alternative type of fuel for your vehicle?

If not, don't feel like you are out of the loop; a great majority of the world probably has no idea that straight vegetable oil can be used as fuel, and if you are one of those people then this is the perfect place for you to start. You don't have to convert it to biodiesel and you don't have to make any special modifications to the oil; if you want to you can just put it in your car and go, but there are some things that you should keep in mind before doing so.

Things to Keep in Mind about Straight Vegetable Oil as Fuel

Of course, with every miracle type of fuel that comes out that can help to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, there are some downsides. The upside to the use of SVO as fuel is that it is readily and widely available, and if you want to you can put it in and take off. At the same time, it does have its downside. First off, the viscosity of straight vegetable oil is certainly much higher than that of gasoline or any type of fuel out there. This doesn’t affect much but it can affect your engine because of the fact that it burns differently and can cause damage to your vehicle. There are a couple of alternatives to this; you can either modify your engine to be able to use straight vegetable oil as is or you can mix it with kerosene or something similar and put it into your engine like that. It is not necessarily advisable to pour straight vegetable oil into your diesel fuel engine and go, but if you have an old car and a wish and a prayer, you might just be able to make it work!

Actually reformatting your vehicle to work with straight vegetable oil and use it as a type of fuel is one way to go about doing things, but that can be costly and expensive. It is well enough at this point that it is possible to use straight vegetable oil as fuel and that we are headed as a society in the right direction—away from the dependence on foreign oils for regular people like you and me. At this point, this type of fuel is far less advanced than biodiesel and compressed natural gas but it does have its upsides, and the kinks are being worked out.  In the end a traditional gas station will (hopefully) be a thing of the past!