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

If you make it from used cooking oil it's not just cheap however you'll be recycling a troublesome waste item. Best of all is the GREAT sensation of flexibility, independence and empowerment it will give you. Here's how to do it-- everything you need to know.

Straight grease fuel (SVO) systems can be a tidy, efficient and economical choice. Unlike biodiesel, with SVO you need to customize the engine. The very best method is to fit an expert singletank SVO system with replacement injectors and glowplugs optimised for veg-oil, along with fuel heating.

With the German Elsbett single-tank SVO system for circumstances you can utilize petro-diesel, biodiesel or SVO, in any mix. Just start up and go, stop and change off, like any other car. 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 need to begin 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 switch 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 operates in any diesel, with no conversion or adjustments to the engine or the fuel system-- just put it in and go. It also has much better cold-weather residential or commercial properties than SVO (however not as as petro-diesel-- see Using biodiesel in winter season). Unlike SVO,

it's backed by numerous long-term tests in lots of countries, including 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 require additional development.

On the other hand, biodiesel can be more pricey, depending 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 has actually to be processed initially.

But the big and quickly growing worldwide band of homebrewers don't mind-- they make a supply each week or as soon as a month and quickly get utilized to it. Many have actually been doing it for years.

Anyway you need to process SVO too, especially WVO (waste veggie oil, used, prepared), which lots of people with SVO systems utilize because it's inexpensive 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 state, "If I'm going to need to do all that I might as well make biodiesel rather." But SVO types belittle that-- it's much less processing than making biodiesel, they say. To each his own.