SVO vs Biodiesel and the Idaho Univ studies
 

After having read the Idaho University Idaho Wvo Study about the problems of the use of straight SVO/WVO i've developed some doubts about my initial desire to use SVO. Yet I don't really want to run biodiesel either because of the cost and hassle of extra processing steps if I can help it.

Is there anyone familiar with the studies and able to offer some kind of counterpoint? I've heard people say that the problems come from running cold SVO in cold engines, yet I doubt all those studies indicating 1000+ hrs of use in farm fields and stuff ran an engine that never hit operating temperature unless it was ultra short use cycles of a few minutes.

I'm curious whether certain things could mitigate the problems - water injection to clean carbon (i've been told it tends to 'steam clean' chambers), more often oil changes to deal with the "polluting of lubrication" issue (along with oil testing, trying to track exactly what really occurs, and possibly something else to counter it), or finding out what kind of 'degumming additive' made the one test on an indirect injection engine seem to work with no problems even after 2000 hours.

Correct me if I read that wrong, I have not read it in detail, but this study is about using unheated oil in diesel engines. If you heat your oil and fuel only in a warm engine you will not have long term issues with the following caveats:

Water cooled, indirect injection only.
Change engine oil frequently.
Purge the vegetable before shutting the engine off.

That severely limits your engine choice, but there are thousands of successful VO conversions, some of them even in direct injection engines. But it eliminates all modern engines.

I have not heard of any effective mitigation once VO polymerization sets in though. I don't know if water injection prevents it either.

Some engines tend to be more tolerant to SVO and WVO, such as the earlier Volkswagen IDIs, Mercedes-BenzOM616/617, Peugeot XUD9 and the Fiat TD70 (1.7L, 70hp turbocharged IDI with mechanical injection). A way to overcome the issues related to glycerin polymerization is related to the pre-heating. A good set of glowplugs or a grid-heater can help to deal with the oil even in cold start.

And older mechanically-injected engines are better, but it's not impossible to tune an electronically-controlled engine to work with some veg oil blends even with a single-tank setup. Eventually, even a tank heater could be fitted, I've already seen it in some Scania buses, and it worked even with regular Diesel fuel.

How about the Mazda/Ford 2.0 indirect injection diesels from the mid '80s?

Also a good option. I've been aware of some old Mazda IDIs running on veg oil. Another good option could be the Nissan TD27.