Hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO)
HVO or renewable diesel: a paraffinic drop-in for marine distillate, specified under EN 15940, with a high cetane number and no ester chemistry.
Hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO) is a liquid hydrocarbon produced from renewable feedstock by hydrotreatment, and ISO 8217:2024 defines it in those terms while noting that it is also called renewable diesel or paraffinic diesel fuel. Chemically it is a paraffin, not an ester, which is what separates it from fatty acid methyl ester and makes it a genuine drop-in for a distillate fuel system.
The full article will cover the specification. EN 15940 is the paraffinic diesel standard, and its current edition defines two classes: class A high cetane with a minimum cetane number of 70 and class B normal cetane with a minimum of 51. The 2023 edition tightened the lubricity requirement, and the standard permits up to 7.0 percent by volume of fatty acid methyl ester in the product. ISO 8217:2024 added a clause covering marine fuel consisting of 100 percent paraffinic diesel fuel.
The article will then set out why HVO behaves better than FAME in a marine fuel system: better cold flow, better oxidation stability, no elastomer attack, and no raised microbial growth risk, at the cost of a lower density that shortens range for a given tank volume. It will cover the well-to-wake accounting that determines what HVO is worth under FuelEU Maritime and the IMO lifecycle guidelines. It links to marine gas oil and biofuels in shipping .