During EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2023, officials with Continental confirmed the company is finalizing the testing of Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil (HVO) as a sustainable fuel option in its CD-100 series of engines.
HVO is a renewable and carbon-neutral fuel alternative, company officials noted.
“This biofuel is produced from vegetable oils, using hydrogen as a catalyst instead of methanol,” officials explained. “In addition to vegetable oils, this premium quality fuel product can be produced from tallow and used cooking oil. By approving HVO for use in CD-100 engines, Continental enables aircraft owners and operators to significantly reduce their carbon footprint without compromising their engine’s performance.”
“Our extensive analysis has thus far demonstrated results that confirm our 4-cylinder Jet-A engines exhibit seamless performance equal to traditional Jet-A fuel,” said Dr. David Dörner, vice president of global research and development for Continental.
It’s hilarious to see that in the latest General Aviation blog one article talks about all the efforts to find a 100LL replacement while a forward thinking company is demonstration you can run veggie frying oil on their aviation engine 🙂
Good for you Continental. That’s called innovation.
And for those you are trying to politicize this article, there is no mention of government in it. And what is wrong with finding alternatives to fossil fuel? Even if we don’t end up using this type of fuel at least we are gaining on the technology front. I think this is very positive.
It is because of backward minded people like this that we are so behind on findings alternatives to leaded fuel in aviation.
Chris
“Sustainability” is part of the tyrannical ESG movement, and is based on the false believe that our resources to live are limited. What is always disregarded is the greatest resource of all, the human mind, which is capable of solving all our needs when the government gets out of the way. Remember all those dire predictions that we would run out of fossil fuels by the 60s? What happened? Prices climbed, signaling to producers and innovators that it would make sense to develop better exploration, extraction, refining, and transporting methods to lower costs. It all happened, by the “invisible hand” that is the profit motive. When government however gets in the way, favoring one solution (crops used for fuel instead of food and feed), it distorts the market, prices go up, choice goes down and everyone loses. Read “The Ultimate Resource” by Julian Simon for more examples of how Liberty and freedom to innovate and chose, have solved countless human challenges and benefitted mankind for centuries, especially since fossil fuels were exploited. See Alex Epstein’s new book “Fossil Future” for how we will use more fossil fuels, not less, to advance humanity – and lower the cost of flying. Use vegetable oil for frying!
This is just stupid window-dressing to appease tree-huggers and the confused who believe that the gas we exhale and plants need to survive is somehow harmful to the environment. I have a pilot friend, who flies a large Cessna jet for a living, who also has several ancient Mercedes diesels that he converted to run on cooking oil. He collects it at area fast-food restaurants. I asked him if he wasn’t afraid when word got out that he would run out of suppliers? He laughed and explained that it is so difficult to clean, store and use the fuel, few would want to do it. One major problem is that it solidifies in cooler weather, a huge problem if it were in an airplane at altitude. The best fuels imaginable for aviation are mogas and diesel/Jet-A.
bout time