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!
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