Tractor vaporising oil

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Tractor vaporising oil

Tractor vaporising oil (or TVO) is a fuel for internal combustion engine

Internal combustion engine

The internal combustion engine is an engine in which the combustion of a fuel occurs in a combustion chamber inside and integral to the engine. In an internal combustion engine it is always the expansion of the high temperature and pressure gases that are produced by the combustion which apply force to the movable component of the engine, such as...
s, produced from paraffin (kerosene

Kerosene

Kerosene, sometimes spelled kerosine in scientific and industrial usage, also known as paraffin, is a combustible hydrocarbon liquid....
). In the United Kingdom

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom , the UK or Britain,is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe....
and Australia

Australia

Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the southern hemisphere comprising the Australia of the world's smallest continent, the major island of Tasmania, and numerous list of islands of Australia in the Indian Ocean and Pacific Oceans....
, after the Second World War, it was commonly used for tractor

Tractor

File:John Deere 3350 tractor cut.JPGA tractor is a vehicle specifically designed to deliver a high tractive effort at slow speeds, for the purposes of hauling a trailer or machinery used in agriculture or construction....
s until diesel engine

Diesel engine

A diesel engine is an internal combustion engine which operates using the diesel cycle . Diesel engines have the highest thermal efficiency compared to any internal combustion or external combustion engine....
s became commonplace. In Australian English

Australian English

Australian English is the form of the English language spoken in Australia....
it was known as power kerosene.

post war Ferguson TE20

Ferguson TE20

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History

The post war Ferguson TE20

Ferguson TE20

The Ferguson Model TE20 was a United Kingdom agricultural tractor. It was Harry Ferguson's most successful design, commonly known as the Little Grey Fergie....
tractor, a carefully researched and near-ideal tractor for use on British farms, was designed around a petrol (gasoline) engine. Although there was a campaign for the reintroduction of agricultural Road Duty (tax)-free petrol, which had been curtailed during the war, this was not forthcoming. Perkins Engines supplied some conversions into diesel engines which could use un-taxed red diesel

Red diesel

Red diesel is a rebated fuel used for heating, electrical generators, and some categories of vehicles including agricultural vehicles and winter service vehicles which rarely use public highways....
.

As a substitute for petrol, TVO was developed. Paraffin (kerosene) was commonly used as a domestic heating fuel and was un-taxed. Paraffin has an octane rating

Octane rating

The octane rating is a measure of the resistance of gasoline and other fuels to detonation in spark plug internal combustion engines. High-performance engines typically have higher compression ratios and are therefore more prone to detonation, so they require higher octane fuel....
of zero and would damage an engine built for petrol. The manufacture of paraffin involves the removal of aromatic hydrocarbon

Aromatic hydrocarbon

An aromatic hydrocarbon or arene is a hydrocarbon, of which the molecular structure incorporates one or more planar sets of six carbon atoms that are connected by delocalised electrons numbering the same as if they consisted of alternating single and double covalent bonds....
s from what is now sold as heating oil

Heating oil

Heating oil, or oil heat is a low viscosity, flammable liquid petroleum product used to fuel building furnaces or boilers.Heating oil is commonly delivered by tank truck to residential, commercial and municipal buildings and stored in above-ground storage tanks located in the basements, garages, or outside adjacent to the building....
. These aromatics have an octane rating, so adding some of that otherwise waste product material back in a controlled manner into paraffin gave TVO. The resulting octane rating of TVO was somewhere between 55 and 70.

In practice TVO had most of the properties of paraffin, including the need for heating to encourage vapourisation. As a result the exhaust and inlet manifolds

Manifold (automotive engineering)

In automotive engineering, an intake manifold or inlet manifold is the part of an engine that supplies the fuel/air mixture to the cylinder s....
were adapted so that more heat from the former warmed the latter. To get the tractor to start from cold, a small second fuel tank was added that contained petrol. The tractor was started on the expensive petrol, then – once the engine was warm – the fuel supply switched over to TVO. So long as the engine was working hard, like when ploughing or pulling a load, the TVO would burn well. Under light conditions, such as travelling unloaded on the highway, the engine was better on petrol.

Some tractor designs included a radiator

Radiator

Radiators are heat exchangers used to transfer thermal energy from one medium to another for the purpose of cooling and heating. The majority of radiators are constructed to function in automobiles, buildings, and electronics....
"blind" that would restrict the flow of air over the radiator which led to the engine running hotter, which could help with starting. If the radiator blind was left shut, though, there was a risk of engine damage, especially in warm weather.

The phrase petrol-paraffin is often used to describe engines that use TVO. This can be interpreted either as

the use of the two fuels, starting on petrol then switching to the paraffin-based TVO
the use of a mixture of petrol and paraffin as a substitute for the proper TVO

TVO was withdrawn from sale by UK suppliers in 1974. An approximation to the correct specification can be made from petrol and heating oil (burning oil).

Tractor vaporising oil

History

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