Researchers at Kansas State University led by Professor Timothy Durrett and their colleagues at Michigan State University and the University of Nebraska, Lincoln have engineered Camelina sativa—a non-food oilseed crop—to produce high levels (up to 85 mol%) of acetyl-triacylglycerols (acetyl-TAGs, or ac-TAGs)—a novel plant oil lipid with possible biofuel or... Read more →

The UK Energy Technologies Institute (ETI) has launched a three-year, £2.5-million (US$3.9-million) project to improve the efficiency of Heavy Duty Vehicles (HDV) by cutting the amount of parasitic losses in the lower drivetrain system by 50%. The ETI is a public-private partnership between global energy and engineering companies—BP, Caterpillar, EDF,... Read more →

A German team of researchers has found that straight rapeseed vegetable oil used as a fuel in diesel engines shows a strong increase in the mutagenicity of emissions compared to a reference diesel fuel and other fuels. In a study published in Archives of Toxicology, the team compared the mutagenic... Read more →

Results of the emissions testing. Click to enlarge. Source: AAE. A 2002 Volkswagen Golf TDi modified to run on straight canola oil (V100) produced emissions below the EPA standards for the vehicle in recent testing at the National Center for Vehicle Emissions Control and Safety located at Colorado State University... Read more →

Left tank is 140-gallon clean tank, right tank is 70-gallon dewatering tank with attached filter extended for changing. Click to enlarge. Frybrid has converted a 40-foot Bluebird motorhome to use straight or waste vegetable oil (SVO or WVO) in its 11-liter, 450hp turbodiesel engine. This system has a 140-gallon heated... Read more →

One of the prototypes, powered by electricity and fuel cells. Photo: L. Barry Hetherington Students from 21 universities around the world gathered at MIT this summer for the MIT Vehicle Design Summit, which concluded on 13 August. The students designed and built prototype commuter vehicles that exploit human power, biofuels,... Read more →

SVO delivery truck. Great Lakes Brewing Company (GLBC) in Northeast Ohio has modified a beer delivery truck to run on recycled straight vegetable oil (SVO) (or waste vegetable oil—WVO). The heavy-duty truck joins GLBC’s “Fatty Wagon” shuttle, which operates on SVO and shuttles patrons to and from Cleveland Indians home... Read more →

The UK’s Sea Fish Industry Authority (Seafish), a cross-industry non-departmental public body (NDPB), has launched a project to develop biofuels for the commercial fishing industry. The UK fishing industry has seen its fuel prices double in the last 24 months, which, along with the increasing pressure to find greener alternatives... Read more →

The WVO Envirocar Red Book. South Korean car manufacturer SsangYong—known for its SUVs and now owned 51% by China’s SAIC—is apparently using New Zealand as a test-bed for Waste Vegetable Oil (WVO) as a fuel. The company has provided a 2.9-liter turbo-diesel Musso that NZ firm Renewable Energy Solutions has... Read more →

Although biodiesel is drawing increasing attention from automakers, policymakers and farmers, there is another biofuel that can be used in diesel engines: straight vegetable oil, or SVO. The two approaches, although apparently similar, are operationally and philosophically quite different. Broadly stated, you can either modify (refine) plant oil to create... Read more →