Anybody can make biodiesel. It's easy, you can make it in your kitchen-- and it's BETTER than the petro-diesel fuel the huge oil companies sell you. Your diesel motor will run much better and last longer on your home-made fuel, and it's much cleaner-- much better for the environment and much better for health.

If you make it from utilized cooking oil it's not only low-cost but you'll be recycling a frustrating waste product. Most importantly is the GREAT feeling of liberty, self-reliance and empowerment it will offer you. Here's how to do it-- whatever you require to understand.

Straight veggie oil fuel (SVO) systems can be a clean, effective and cost-effective alternative. Unlike biodiesel, with SVO you have to modify the engine. The best method is to fit a professional singletank SVO system with replacement injectors and glowplugs optimised for veg-oil, as well as fuel heating.

With the German Elsbett single-tank SVO system for example you can utilize petro-diesel, biodiesel or SVO, in any combination. Just launch and go, stop and change off, like any other cars and truck. Journey to Forever's Toyota TownAce van uses an Elsbett single-tank system. More

There are likewise two-tank SVO systems which pre-heat the oil to make it thinner. You have to start the engine on normal petroleum diesel or biodiesel in one tank and after that switch to SVO in the other tank when the veg-oil is hot enough, and change back to petro- or biodiesel before you stop the engine, or you'll coke up the injectors.

More info on straight grease systems in my blog site.

3. Biodiesel or SVO?

Biodiesel has some clear benefits over SVO: it works in any diesel, without any conversion or modifications to the engine or the fuel system-- simply put it in and go. It likewise has much better cold-weather residential or commercial properties than SVO (however not as great as petro-diesel-- see Using biodiesel in winter). Unlike SVO,

it's backed by lots of long-term tests in numerous countries, consisting of countless miles on the road.

Biodiesel is a clean, safe, ready-to-use, alternative fuel, whereas it's fair to say that many SVO systems are still speculative and need additional advancement.

On the other hand, biodiesel can be more costly, depending how much you make, what you make it from and whether you're comparing it with brand-new oil or used oil (and depending on where you live). And unlike SVO, it has actually to be processed initially.

But the big and quickly growing worldwide band of homebrewers do not mind-- they make a supply each week or once a month and soon get used to it. Many have actually been doing it for several years.

Anyway you need to process SVO too, specifically WVO (waste vegetable oil, utilized, cooked), which lots of people with SVO systems use since it's cheap or totally free for the taking. With WVO food particles and pollutants and water must be removed, and it probably needs to be deacidified too. Biodieselers say, "If I'm going to have to do all that I might too make biodiesel rather." But SVO types scoff at that-- it's much less processing than making biodiesel, they state. To each his own.