Rolls-royce confirms all of its current engines can run on 100 percent SAF

1994 Toyota pickup with a Om617 swap. I bought a kit for the engine swap then did all the work to swap it.

I did nothing to handle the oil. It just works. You pour it in the tank and go. However, it doesn't work in the winter without a heater or additives.

It's not more common because a) mechanic diesels are old technology and means you'll be driving an old vehicle. b) WVO is a hit or miss in your area. Lots of restaurants will get paid for their old oil by recycling centers so most wont give it away. c) processing it is tough until you get a system in place

As well you can run on so many different fluids. Waste motor oil, waste transmission fluid, brake fluid, etc.

I ran my 1999 Nissan Primera 2.0 turbo diesel on virgin vegtable oil for a couple of years (I had about 400L in the back when taking the channel ferry to to drive around Europe). It cost 0.40p/l instead of 1.20/l in the UK. Bought it from a farmer from an ad on eBay. No modification needed, but you need to have a couple of fuel filters and a tool to change it handy, in case you have a blockage (more common when first starting to run on oil). In winter add 5-10% petrol to keep the viscosity down. You can always add diesel to the tank without issue.

I think many 90s indirect-injection diesels can run vegtable oil without modification, but some ppl add a fuel heating system or a dual-fuel switchover system.

There were newspaper stories of ppl going into Tescos and filling their trollies with 5L bottles of vegtable oil, then going to the parking and filling their tanks. Later (virgin) vegetable oil became more expensive than diesel, used oil is a different story.

Bonus: when reversing, or at the lights with a breeze, you often notice an odour like fried chips. :)

It probably wasn't more common because it was some hassle with the fuel filters and potential damage to fuel pump (some are built better than others). The Nissan had a license-built Bosch design that was solid.

In Poland at least, people were doing it - mostly rural in their tractors - but just straight using cooking oil for your trucks&tractors is illegal - too much pollution.

Of course SAF is cleaned up to different standards. Also, SAF is not just cooking oil, they use various kinds of tech.

Not a truck, but my buddy had an old 300SDL (1984, I think)

He would just run whatever in that. I think my favorite was peanut oil, it made the neighborhood smell like Chinese food.

Those are requirements of the use case, not the underlying technology. Turbines are famously adaptable to different fuels.

Mechanical diesels will run on bunker fuel.

Grease traps are required in all commercial kitchens here in Michigan. AFAIK they're more intended to protect the sewer system rather than for day-to-day grease disposal.

> Are you sure that’s the sewer?

It are always grease traps, but it is the same pipe that is used by the toilet, so I would say it is technically just the sewer. And ss the saying goes: if it looks like sewer, smells like sewer, it probably is sewer :-)

Don't get me started. If you ever have eaten that, don't click on this link and surely don't scroll down to the stinky tofu paragraph (1)

(1) don't click: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_safety_incidents_in_China

Yes? Millions and millions of them..

Not common in the US, but quite common in EU, apparently.

Source: I own a diesel car, Kia Cee’d 1.6L

16% of personal vehicles in the Netherlands are currently diesel cars. About 20% of all vehicles sold here last year were diesel vehicles. So at least here, it's very common for people to drive a diesel car. They come in all sizes.

Like half the cars in Europe run on diesel.

It never became popular in the US, although there are still a few cars there that run in diesel.

Diesel engines are typically more reliable and cheaper to run than gasoline. More low-end torque also made them easier to drive with a manual gearbox.

They never became common in the US partly because of differing emissions requirements.

Yes, even in the US.

Have you heard about Dieselgate?

You're probably American. Diesel cars are common in Europe.

It's super common here in Sweden. Hell, we have a diesel car! The used car market was full of diesel cars. All petrol stations here have diesel tanks. It's diesel all the way down!

They need less fuel than petrol, but one issue is that they don't lend themselves well to 100% city driving because this can lead to costly diesel particulate filter repairs as they clog up. Diesel cars automatically regenerate the filters (burn the muck to ash) as you drive e.g. over 40 mph for >25 minutes or so. (depends on car model) You should drive like that at least once a month.

However, where I live, longer distance driving is pretty common.

They're falling out of favor with rising diesel prices since covid and of course EV's. Companies here go full EV nowadays for several reasons, public image only one of them.

I'd also like to go electrical but seems like we're still stuck for yet a few years because they still don't offer charging poles in apartment garages very liberally, and for any kind of convenient EV use, it honestly builds upon the fact that you can charge it overnight close to home.

Up until the VW scandal GM was pushing diesel in most of their fleet - from the Chevy Cruze, Equinox to the Colorado all had strait 4 diesels as a premium tier option.

My car is diesel (in the UK) it was popular a few years ago because CO2 emissions are reduced. Unfortunately particulate emissions are problematic. Hence modern diesel cars need Ad Blu to help catalyse their destruction.

I've mostly owned European diesel passenger cars (in USA). It's lower maintenance, more efficient, I like the way they drive (more torque/cool sound), and a fun hobby with a great community of hobbyists that help each other out.

It's rare enough that I often get very concerned gas station attendees warning me that I'm "accidentally" putting diesel in my car.

> Some Cold War era fighter engines were able to run diesel for a while, tge reasoning was to allow quick re-location of the aircraft to safety. They needed basically a full rebuild if run on diesel for too long.

Interesting, haven't heard of that. But yes, I can imagine with diesel containing heavier hydrocarbons than kerosene, there could be a buildup of soot deposits on the hot parts of the engine. Might also be some certification issue, that if you operate with out-of-spec fuel then you need to overhaul the engine before it's considered flight worthy again (even if there might be no problem with the engine per se).

Then again, don't these naval ships with gas turbine engines run on something like standard light marine diesel oil?

> And all multi-fuel engines the military tried, e.g. in the Chieftain (if memory serves well), were rather underwhelming and ran mostly on diesel anyway.

The Chieftain engine was designed to be "truly" multi-fuel, being in principle capable of running on both diesel, petrol, and anything in between like kerosene.

If you limit the multi-fuelness to diesel and the current day narrow cut kerosenes that are used as jet fuel, it's a much simpler problem.

E.g. Western military diesel vehicles tend to be specced to run on diesel or JP-8 (the military variant of standard Jet A-1 jet fuel, with a few additives). And aviation diesel engines used in some GA aircraft tend to be certified for Jet A-1 (and they are often modified versions of standard automotive diesel engines).

Don't forget the Rimac-Bugatti structure:

https://www.thedrive.com/tech/41414/rimac-just-bought-bugatt...

Volkswagen group has been said to have slated the sell-off of Ferdinand Piëch's "favorite toy" since his death in 2019. . . . The complicated corporate ownership structure of Bugatti-Rimac places Rimac Group as the majority stakeholder of the endeavor with 55 percent of the control. Volkswagen-owned Porsche retains the other 45 percent of ownership. Above Rimac Group sits another number of shareholders, beginning with CEO Mate Rimac who controls 37 percent of the company. Porsche controls 24 percent of Rimac Group, Hyundai has 12 percent, and "other investors" amass the remaining 27 percent.

> ... just to get a sense of how much more of a clusterfuck it is than the tidbits I know about.

And it all goes back to the Porsche and Piech families, which still own a majority share in VW.

But to me the most fascinating of them all is when Porsche tried a short-squeeze on VW stocks to both acquire VW and make countless billions in the process but that failed due to the... 2008 financial crisis. Without the crisis hitting, Porsche (the company, not the family) was acquiring VW.

Their short squeeze failed and Porsche lost an insane amount of money on their temporarily worthless VW stocks (the VW stock lost 75% of its value between 2008 and 2009, something insane like that) and then... VW had to rescue Porsche by acquiring Porsche.

But then as of late Porsche spun off out of VW again.

It's mindboggling stuff.

The best description I've read about Porsche (the company) is: "The hedge fund that happened to also sell cars".

wouldn't be surprised if they were BOTH able to claim subsidies based on this as well, and write it off on their taxes. Triple dipping !

Your cynicism might be warranted, but it's now always true. The airline I fly for domestic travel (Air New Zealand) has - in the past - donated some of the money from customers selecting to offset emissions, to the Native Forest Restoration Trust [0], a charity that buys strategic parcels of land, re-plants, and then maintains the land after protecting it forever for the public using the QE II trust. I don't consider that to be greenwashing - that's real and useful.

0. https://www.nfrt.org.nz