Long Run Tests of Vehicles Using Straight Vegetable Oil as Fuel

Abstract

“Straight Vegetable Oil (SVO)” method means the direct use of vegetable oil as car fuel through installation of a heater unit in the car to decrease vegetable oil viscosity. In this study, the authors carried out performance tests on the direct use of waste cooking oil using a car with a heater unit. Moreover, the authors carried out long run driving on road tests in 5 years using a public car of Minami-Aizu town in Fukushima prefecture and analyzed the case of troubles and clarified the availability and problems of SVO vehicles. As a result, the car with a heater unit shows similar performance in both cases using vegetable oil or diesel fuel as fuel. The tested SVO vehicle of Minami-Aizu town could be driven 38,127 km mainly by waste vegetable oil with a total driving distance of 52,293 km in long run driving tests in 5 years, and decreased about 3813.5 L of light oil which corresponds to 9.99 t of CO₂.