View source

==Biodiesel & WVO==

[[Image:WVO 480x640.jpg|thumb|left|Waste vegetable oil ([[WVO]]) can power a diesel engine.]]Veggie Van Gogh runs on waste vegetable oil ([[WVO]]) that we harvest for free from restaurants along the way! It has '''vastly''' reduced pollutants, comes from American farmers instead of conquered Middle East nations, and has a pleasant, french-fry odor while driving, unlike the stench that comes from most other diesel vehicles.

"So, how come everyone doesn't do this?" you might ask. Rudolph Diesel originally designed his engine to work on a wide variety of fuels, but because petroleum was so cheap, diesel engine design became optimized for so-called "diesel" fuel, which actually started out as a waste byproduct of gasoline production.

But vegetable oil is much thicker than diesel fuel at room temperature. Modern injectors designed for diesel fuel do not disperse it finely enough to fire, and modern injection pumps cannot handle the thick fluid.

So the key is to thin the vegetable oil somehow. This is commonly done in two ways:
* chemically change the vegoil to something thinner, or
* heat the vegoil until it becomes thinner.
We use both techniques in Veggie Van Gogh.

''Chemically thinning the vegoil'' uses alcohol and a catylist to change the molecular structure of the oil so that it flows just like petro-diesel. This is called [[EcoReality:biofuel|biodiesel]].

''Heating the vegoil'' is easily accomplished with the help of waste engine heat from the radiator. The engine is started on biodiesel, run until warm, then switched over to vegoil. A few minutes before shutting the engine down, it is switched back to biodiesel so it will start easily after it cools down.