Vegetable Energy Group: "Driving Across America on Waste Vegetable Oil!"

The conversion of a diesel engine to run on waste vegetable oil (WVO) is simple: when heated to 160 degrees Fahrenheit, vegetable oil runs through a diesel engine exactly like diesel. The problem, when using vegetable oil as fuel, is heating and maintaining heated vegetable oil in your diesel system. An engine converted to run on waste vegetable oil has a filtration system, a second fuel tank to store vegetable oil, and a heating mechanism inside the second fuel tank to keep the fuel heated. Initially, the truck must run on diesel for a few minutes, long enough to heat the vegetable oil: when the vegetable oil reaches 160 degrees, the system switches over to run solely on vegetable oil for the duration of the drive. When shutting down the system for the night, it is necessary to purge the system of vegetable oil, and switch it back over to diesel for about a minute before shutting down, to prevent cool vegetable oil from coagulating in the engine. Using waste vegetable oil as a fuel is beneficial in a few ways: it is a waste product that we are recycling, it burns more cleanly and efficiently than petroleum, and the fuel is readily available at a very low cost.