Welcome to the Vege Oil Users section of the Biofuels Forum based in Australia.
Here we discuss running your diesel powered engine on vegetable oil or animal fat. Other terms we use are SVO for Straight Vegetable Oil and WVO, Waste Vegetable Oil.
- We DO NOT support the clearing of rainforests or other unsustainable practices to produce oil to use as fuel.
- We DO NOT support the use of new food grade oil as fuel.
- We DO support the use of waste oil from the restaurant trade as fuel.
This FAQ does not contain irrefutable facts. It contains information gleaned from many sources over many years and is the combined wisdom and experience of a number of Australians. We offer no promises the information we provide is totally accurate and reliable. We do our best and like evidence based solutions, but what you do is up to you.
If you’ve come here to learn how to run your petrol powered engine on Vege, we’re 100% sure it can’t be done. You’re welcome to read on, but you MUST NOT add SVO to your petrol tank.
If you want to run your vehicle on BioDiesel, please go to the other section of this forum. Biodiesel is made from vege oil and converted into a different form by a chemical process. We do not change the nature of the oil and we use it in it’s raw form – though filtered.
A diesel owner has several options.
1. Buy distillate from servo.
2. Buy commercial biodiesel.
3. Buy new vegetable oil and convert it to biodiesel.
4. Collect used vegetable oil (WVO) and convert it to biodiesel.
5. Use a blend of any of the above.
6. Convert the vehicle to use vegetable oil (SVO) as fuel.
6a. single tank conversion - start on veg.
6b. 2 tank conversion - start on distillate or bio.
If using vegetable oil as fuel (vehicle converted) can use new SVO or used WVO. WVO needs to be filtered and possibly dried before use.
The simplest option is 1. Next is 2. 5 is pretty simple. 3 and 4 are pretty equal.
There is ongoing discussion over whether it is simpler to convert the vehicle and filter the WVO for use or to leave the vehicle as is and convert the WVO to biodiesel. Basically it comes down to personal preference and the suitability of the vehicle you own.
If you’ve come here wanting all the answers in one place, we’ll do our best to help you, but you must be prepared to learn many things for yourself. You are venturing into the mysterious world of alternative fuels and your engine manufacturer did not build your engine to run on these fuels. There are risks and there are successes, but there are no simple easy solutions. You must be prepared to try to understand the information in the FAQ’s and learn how it applies to your own vehicle before asking questions on the forum. There is a search function for this forum and there is Google. There is a great deal of information on the internet, you WILL get confused initially.
Some places you can go to find out basic information about diesel engines are:
Wikipedia Diesel Engine Diesel engine - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Wikipedia Injection Pump Injection pump - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Please now read the second FAQ.
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