A jet turbine is a diesel engine; you could run one on straight up cooking oil the same as any other diesel engine. The same principles apply you just have a combustion chamber instead of a cylinder.
Jet engines aren’t actually Diesel engines though. They don’t use a Diesel cycle but a Brayton cycle. The principles are different - a Diesel engine works by having a fuel which ignites when compressed in a confined space, while a Brayton engine specifically avoids that and ignites its fuel via a heat source.
But the fuel known as “Diesel” is pretty close to jet fuel, both of them being almost kerosene, so it should burn just fine in a jet engine.
You can also run diesel cars and trucks on kerosene. The winter blend of diesel fuel in cold climates is a mixture of diesel and kerosene (which has a lower freezing temperature).
Straight kerosene would work, but it is less lubricating that diesel fuel, so you need to mix some engine oil in with it to avoid damaging the engine. And on a modern car you are probably going to destroy any emissions control system, as kerosene has much higher sulfur than diesel.
> You can also run diesel cars and trucks on kerosene. The winter blend of diesel fuel in cold climates is a mixture of diesel and kerosene (which has a lower freezing temperature).
I know that Mercedes diesel sedans here in Asia has "NO ADDITIVES" written multiple times all around its inner fuel lid.
I don't know for sure if Germany is considered to have cold climate, but if it is, I wonder if their diesel has kerosene and how that plays out with these engines.
As I understand, Mercedes diesels are ubiquitous in some European countries (atleast as a taxi)?
In terms of the length of the hydrocarbon chains, winter diesel has shorter chains than summer diesel (to reduce the gelling temperature), which moves it towards a kerosene-like composition. So in that way you could say it's a blend of (summer) diesel and kerosene. However, it's a product made to diesel specifications at a refinery, and has to satisfy all the other properties of diesel fuel standards like sulphur content, cetane number etc etc.
Many years ago, one (among many others) of the reasons why Caterpillar earth moving equipment was ubiquitous was that their diesels could be tuned to burn almost any fuel. probably not cooking oil, but the diesel fuel available in some countries was more like what is called "bunker"[0] than anything else.
On the other hand up to the '80's it was a common practice to add in cold climates some 5%-10% gasoline or kerosene to diesel fuel directly in the tank of trucks and building site machines.
I remember a 70s? book speculating that jet engines could run on a wide variety of sources, eg. shredded straw (intended for tractors and combine harvesters). I don't think that idea was well received... don't see too many jet tractors around.
The old Tornado jet engines can run, basically, everything. For a while that is, the need serious overhaul after running on Diesel for example after low singel diggit flight hours. The reasoning back the, at the hight of the cold war, was to be able to move the squadrons quickly to dort strips an roads and out of harms way, and back to an airfield, in case nuclear strikes and stuff. For that purpose using Diesel is helpful I guess. It was never done, exept for trials as far as I know.
