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

If you make it from utilized cooking oil it's not just cheap but you'll be recycling a troublesome waste product. Best of all is the GREAT sensation of flexibility, self-reliance and empowerment it will offer you. Here's how to do it-- whatever you require to understand.

Straight vegetable oil fuel (SVO) systems can be a tidy, reliable and affordable choice. Unlike biodiesel, with SVO you have to customize the engine. The very best way is to fit an expert 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 circumstances you can use petro-diesel, or SVO, in any mix. Just launch and go, stop and turn off, like any other automobile. Journey to Forever's Toyota TownAce van uses an Elsbett single-tank system. More

There are also two-tank SVO systems which pre-heat the oil to make it thinner. You have to begin the engine on common 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.

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-- just put it in and go. It likewise has much better cold-weather properties than SVO (but not as excellent as petro-diesel-- see Using biodiesel in winter). Unlike SVO,

it's backed by numerous long-term tests in numerous nations, consisting of millions of miles on the roadway.

Biodiesel is a clean, safe, ready-to-use, alternative fuel, whereas it's reasonable to say that lots of SVO systems are still experimental and need further advancement.

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

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

Anyway you have to process SVO too, specifically WVO (waste vegetable oil, utilized, prepared), which lots of people with SVO systems utilize due to the fact that it's inexpensive or free for the taking. With WVO food particles and pollutants and water must be eliminated, and it probably should be deacidified too. Biodieselers say, "If I'm going to have to do all that I may too make biodiesel instead." But SVO types discount that-- it's much less processing than making biodiesel, they state. To each his own.