Anybody can make biodiesel. It's simple, 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 better for health.

If you make it from utilized cooking oil it's not only low-cost but you'll be recycling a bothersome waste item. Most importantly is the GREAT sensation of flexibility, self-reliance and empowerment it will give you. Here's how to do it-- everything you require to understand.

Straight grease fuel (SVO) systems can be a clean, reliable and economical option. Unlike biodiesel, with SVO you have to customize the engine. The best method is to fit an expert singletank SVO system with replacement injectors and glowplugs optimised for veg-oil, in addition to fuel heating.

With the German Elsbett single-tank SVO system for instance you can use petro-diesel, biodiesel or SVO, in any mix. Just start up and go, stop and turn off, like any other car. Journey to Forever's Toyota TownAce van utilizes 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 ordinary petroleum diesel or biodiesel in one tank and then change 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 details on straight grease systems in my blog site.

3. Biodiesel or SVO?

Biodiesel has some clear benefits over SVO: it operates in any diesel, without any conversion or adjustments to the engine or the fuel system-- just put it in and go. It also has much better cold-weather properties than SVO (however not as good as petro-diesel-- see Using biodiesel in winter). Unlike SVO,

it's backed by many long-term tests in lots of nations, including millions of miles on the road.

Biodiesel is a clean, safe, ready-to-use, alternative fuel, whereas it's reasonable to state that many SVO systems are still speculative and require more advancement.

On the other hand, biodiesel can be more expensive, 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 needs to be processed initially.

But the large and quickly growing around the world band of homebrewers don't mind-- they make a supply weekly or as soon as a month and quickly get utilized to it. Many have actually been doing it for several years.

Anyway you need to process SVO too, particularly WVO (waste vegetable oil, used, prepared), which lots of people with SVO systems use due to the fact that it's cheap or complimentary for the taking. With WVO food particles and impurities and water should be removed, and it probably needs to be deacidified too. Biodieselers say, "If I'm going to have to do all that I may too make biodiesel instead." But SVO types scoff at that-- it's much less processing than making biodiesel, they say. To each his own.