Vegetable Oil Fuel Powered Buses
Straight Vegetable Oil (SVO) is being used as fuel for powering diesel engines all over the world. From buses and cars here in the U.S. to generators that power small remote villages of 20-30 people in India, vegetable oil burning engines are doing the work. They offer plenty of power cheaply, are less toxic, and have lower emissions. Diesel engines can run on unmodified vegetable oil, simply heat the oil or mix it with other fuels (more costly). Using waste vegetable oil from restaurants can be amazingly inexpensive and offers superior ecological impact.
The original diesel engine was designed to run on peanut oil. The engines found in the buses sold today are designed to run on regular diesel (which is much thinner). Vegetable oil will burn in a diesel engine once its viscosity, or liquid thickness, is made like petro-diesel. Mixing vegetable oil with kerosene or regular diesel will do the trick but that puts you right back to more expense and bad emissions.
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The true value of the vegetable oil system is in it's purity. Heat it to about 160 °F and you can run FREE waste vegetable oil from a restaurant. So, obviously the warmer the weather the better the return on your investment because it will be easier to get the temperature up and thin the oil out. |
Most restaurants pay to have this waste vegetable oil removed and disposed of so the economic incentive is there for them to "donate" it to you. This band toured around in a small vegetable oil burning bus and their exploits can be seen at http://aphrodesia.org/veggie.htm
Most buses and cars that run in cold weather use biodiesel to start the engine. Biodiesel can be a unique concoction containing any number of the following: vegetable oil, regular diesel, kerosene, and plant made diesel. Then the separate vegetable fuel tank is heated with hot coolant from the engine. Once the fuel heats up and thins out a switch is flipped and the engine begins drawing its fuel from the pure vegetable oil tank.
Alternatively some RV's and buses use the onboard generator to run a heating element to heat the fuel. This allows for ONE fuel tank and ONE kind of fuel to keep up with. Simpler is nearly always superior.
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Visit Greasy for a site dedicated to vegetable oil burning cars. There are NO buses as of January 2005 on this site but the same principles apply. Just convert your own bus engine over. The 5.9 liter Cummins turbo diesel engine is nearly foolproof for waste vegetable oil conversion because it has an inline pump similar to the nearly indestructible Mercedes pumps. The better fuel flow the better results and easier starting. |
This site has bio-diesel recipes to make your own fuel and run your vehicle on http://www.dancingrabbit.org/biodiesel/newoil.html. Remember that the chemicals used to make biodiesel are toxic and dangerous. Remember these recipes are NOT the best way to go. For the best best fuel economy, best performance, lowest emissions, and lowest cost you should go for the straight vegetable oil process described at the beginning of this article.
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