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In the context of fossil fuel crisis and ever increasing vehicle population, the search for alternative fuel has become necessary. Vegetable oil can be used as an alternative fuel for the diesel engine operation. How ever, engine performance is inferior to diesel due to their higher viscosity. The higher viscosity of vegetable oil causes improper atomization of fuel during injection resulting in incomplete combustion. This leads to smoky exhaust in a diesel engine. While pre-heating of vegetable oil, it was found that viscosity reduces exponentially with temperature. The high temperature of the exhaust, which is otherwise wasted, can be used to preheat the vegetable oil. For this purpose a heat exchanger has to be designed. It was observed that the rubber seed oil (RSO) requires a heating temperature of 155°C to bring down its viscosity to that of diesel.