Vegetable Oil Economy - Transportation

Transportation

Vegetable oil is used for transportation in four different ways:

• Vegetable oil blends - Mixing vegetable oil with diesel lets users get some of the advantages of burning vegetable oil and is often done with no modification to the vehicle.
• Biodiesel - If vegetable oil is transesterified it becomes biodiesel. Biodiesel burns like normal diesel and works fine in any diesel engine. The name just indicates that the fuel came from vegetable oil.
• Straight vegetable oil - Straight vegetable oil works in diesel engines if it is heated first. Some diesel engines already heat their fuel, others need a small electric heater on the fuel line. How well it works depends on the heating system, the engine, the type of vegetable oil (thinner is easier), and the climate (warmer is easier). Some data is available on results users are seeing. As vegetable oil has become more popular as a fuel, engines are being designed to handle it better. The Elsbett engine is designed to run on straight vegetable oil. However, as of the start of 2007, it seems that there are not any production vehicles warrantied for burning straight vegetable oil, although Deutz offer a tractor and John Deere are known to be in late stages of engine development. There is a German rapeseed oil fuel standard DIN 51605. At this point straight vegetable oil is only a niche market although the market segment in Germany is rapidly growing with large haulage vehicle fleets adopting the fuel, largely for economic reasons. A growing number of decentralised oil mills provide a large part of this fuel.
• Vegetable oil refining - Vegetable oil can be used as feedstock for an oil refinery. There it can be transformed into fuel by hydrocracking (which breaks big molecules into smaller ones using hydrogen) or hydrogenation (which adds hydrogen to molecules). These methods can produce gasoline, diesel, or propane. Some commercial examples of vegetable oil refining are NExBTL, H-Bio, and the ConocoPhilips Process.

The transition can start with biodiesel, vegetable oil refining, and vegetable oil blends, since these technologies do not require the capital outlay of converting an engine to run on vegetable oils. Because it costs to convert vegetable oil into biodiesel it is expected that vegetable oil will always be cheaper than biodiesel. After there are production cars that can use straight vegetable oil and a standard type available at gas stations, consumers will probably choose straight vegetable oil to save money. So the transition to vegetable oil can happen gradually.