What is Straight Vegetable Oil (SVO) fuel?
SVO is vegetable oil that has been pre-filtered for use in a modified Diesel engine. An engine that has been modified to run on SVO will typically be a two-tank system. A small tank is required to contain biodiesel or regular diesel for vehicle start-up and shut down. Once the engine is up to operating temperature, a solenoid switching valve is opened to draw fuel from the larger vegetable oil tank. The line running from the vegetable oil tank and often the tank itself is heated. This system has shown to be reliable for indirect injection Diesel engines, but is not yet proven with direct injection engines, which may experience injection coking problems. Why vegetable oil fuel? Technical feasibility – The viscosity of vegetable oil must be reduced to use it as fuel for a Diesel engine. There are two main ways to do this. The most common way is to chemically convert the oil into biodiesel. The second is to modify a Diesel engine so it preheats the oil to produce an acceptable viscosity p
