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 sell you. Your diesel motor will run 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 just cheap however you’ll be recycling a problematic waste product. Best of all is the GREAT feeling of flexibility, self-reliance and empowerment it will provide you. Here’s how to do it-- whatever you require to know.

Straight vegetable oil fuel (SVO) systems can be a tidy, effective and affordable choice. Unlike biodiesel, with SVO you have to modify the engine. The finest 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 instance you can utilize petro-diesel, biodiesel or SVO, in any mix. Just start up and go, stop and change off, like any other vehicle. Journey to Forever’s Toyota TownAce van utilizes 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 start the engine on ordinary petroleum diesel or biodiesel in one tank and then 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 information on straight grease systems in my blog.

3. Biodiesel or SVO?

Biodiesel has some clear advantages over SVO: it works in any diesel, with no conversion or adjustments to the engine or the fuel system-- just put it in and go. It also has better cold-weather homes than SVO (however not as great as petro-diesel-- see Using biodiesel in winter season). Unlike SVO,

it’s backed by lots of long-lasting tests in lots of nations, including countless miles on the road.

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

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

But the large and rapidly growing around the world band of homebrewers do not mind-- they make a supply each week or as soon as a month and soon get utilized to it. Many have been doing it for several years.

Anyway you have to process SVO too, especially WVO (waste grease, used, cooked), which many individuals with SVO systems due to the fact that it’s inexpensive or totally free for the taking. With WVO food particles and impurities and water should be eliminated, and it probably should be deacidified too. Biodieselers say, “If I’m going to need to do all that I might also make biodiesel rather.” But SVO types discount that-- it’s much less processing than making biodiesel, they say. To each his own.