can we run our cars with vegetable oils?

Answer 1

Why couldn't someone come up with an engine were you needed only water...I mean the earth is made up of like 70% water.

Answer 2

Others have already commented that vegetable oils - sometimes called "bio fuel" or "biomass fuel" - already operate diesel engines. Others have commented that such fuels are inefficient, or do not work effectively in standard cars made to run on gasoline. and some have said this is a dumb idea.

Those who make fun of biomass fuels are wrong. They have very narrow standards of comparison. If you have no gasoline (or is you have gasoline that costs so mcuh only a few can pay for it), then a biomass fuel is very, very good indeed. If you have an engine intended to operate as well as possible on such a fuel, with appropriate operating and pollution systems made to contain emissions, then it is even better.

Such engines and systems alrady exist. The American auto industry and leading scientific groups joined in a study of "alternative fuel" vehicles more than 12 years ago, in the "CleanFleet Project" conducted over 4 years in Los Angeles. They used existing products to test several fuels in fleet operations of a Federal Express truck group. Among these was a fuel that might be considered "biomass" - methanol, which can be distilled from various vegetable or waste products.

I drove a car at the same time that used either pure methanol or a mixture of gasoline and methanol, and found it generally very satisfactory.

The CleanFleet Project showed that engine design, available technology - 12 years ago! - and operating conditions all worked for natural gas, propane, "reformulated" gasoline, methanol, and even electricity. The electric truck in the fleet was late arriving and not a design as advanced as those available today.

Gasoline is, indeed, a highly-efficient fuel even with the very wasteful designs of cars and trucks in popular use in the United States. However, it is by no means the best or only solution for vehicle propulsion, the technology to use other fuels is already well-developed, and if you REALLY want to use "biomass" vegetable oils in your car you can do it. I agree with people who say taking an ordinary gasoline engine car and doing this is not the best idea, but it is possible with some modifications. Even better is just making cars to do this to begin with. And it is ultimately a very good idea for the environment.

Oil is too valuable to burn.

Answer 3

Sure..just look up Biodiesel with Google or Yahoo search engines. There is a ton of info. People have been doing this since Rudolf Diesel invented the diesel engine back in the 1800's. His first one ran very well on peanut oil... all that changed with he disappeared on a ship and big oil companies directed development toward gasoline engines. Hummmm makes you wonder eh? Read the history and see how things could have been with zilch pollution from vegetable oil all these years! Sorry...there isn't time to build a industry big enough to head off the coming crash due to energy demand.

Answer 4

Diesel cars, yes.

But it is very expensive and extremely damaging to the environment unless you use ONLY waste fat. There is about enough waste fat in the entire USA to fuel about 100, 000 cars. IOW about enough for a small city.

If any more people tried to run thier cars on vegetable iol it would require planting crops just to make fuel oil. That requires petroluem for the tractors, the water pumps, the fertiliser etc. The amount of vegetable oil produced doing this is less than 10% of the amount of petroleum oil burned in production. IOW if everyone ran their car on vegetable oil it would increase pretoleum consumption ten-fold.

Very bad for the environment.

Answer 5

Not our current cars, or more precisely, not and continue to use our current internal combustion engine. Any material (gas or vegetable oil) that can be combusted to get energy out of it could be used. But, gas has lots more energy in it that cooking oil does, so with current engines, it's gas that gets used. New materials andalloys would have to be invented to use cooking oil. These would be very expensive thus making what they were used to build, i.e. the cars & engines, very expensive. So, again in an economic sense, gas wins.

Answer 6

Only a specially modified engine will run with used vegetable oil. Putting vegetable oil in a standard engine, will certainly destroy it.

Answer 7

there might be cars out there that they are making so they can run on vegetable oil but ,no.

Answer 8

Sure, if you have a tank that can accomodate 50,000 liters of veg oil and pistons that run their crankshafts at 1000,000 rpm. What I am trying to say is, the combustion reactions of veg oils just don't produce enough energy.

Ayerhs.

Answer 9

There are some cars that run on grease! So yes vegi oils used to deep fry potatoes would count!

Answer 10

In Brazil, they have cars that have two fuel tanks. One for Ethanol and the other for gasoline. Ethanol is a fuel made from corn. Other places use sugar canes and grasses.