The plants are characterized by the use vegetable oil derived from oil seeds.

This type of system, with its specificity, is well suited to energy-intensive industrial contexts. The reduced space requirements allow one to get into an area between 100 and 200 square meters, a plant of approximately 1 MW, including the footprint of the tanks. The plants are also suitable for vegetable oil to agriculture for the local production of electricity and heat because they allow to achieve the benefits as the reduction of emissions and abatement costs of energy production. At the same time, the farmers are born of new revenue opportunities through agriculture "no food" for example by allocating part of the crop with oilseeds. The Italian crops possible latitudes, ie those of soybean, sunflower, rapeseed offer the chance to get great benefits such as: each kWe installed power consumes oil production obtained from approximately 2 hectares of crop. For tax purposes it is sufficient to cultivate 1 hectare per kWe installed, so if you install a 100 kW cogenerator, the consumption of vegetable oil will be about 200 tons (obtained from about 200 hectares of cultivation). In order to include the activities of electricity production in the land tax regime is sufficient production of vegetable oil only 102 tonnes (51% of consumption, equivalent to about 102 hectares).

The central vegetable oil based and are built on the following principles:

• fuel must be heated in order to reduce the viscosity of the fuel, both with the central function and not. For this reason, vegetable oil storage tanks are heated as well as the heat treatment system and the oil filter;
• fuel must undergo a cleansing process in steps as the vegetable oil is a "live" product, and therefore highly unstable, especially if kept warm or following sudden changes in temperature. To remedy malfunctions, we construct with subsequent filtration systems that go beyond the average of those made for facilities for industrial purposes (usually for 10 micron mesh);
• the cogenerator is powered by vegetable oil only when its physical and chemical conditions have reached the appropriate characteristics, the electrical output produced can be sold online or self-consumed, while heat production can be used locally in the form of hot water, oil thermal, hot water or steam;
• according to local regulations, which is the size of the plant, may need to install treatment systems for reducing emission levels of nitrogen oxides (NOx), carbon monoxide (CO) and particulate matter (PM).