Anybody can make biodiesel. It's simple, you can make it in your kitchen-- and it's BETTER than the petro-diesel fuel the big oil companies 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 only cheap but you'll be recycling a problematic waste item. Best of all is the GREAT sensation of liberty, 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 tidy, efficient and economical option. Unlike biodiesel, with SVO you have 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, in addition to fuel heating.

With the German Elsbett single-tank SVO system for circumstances you can utilize petro-diesel, biodiesel 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 need to begin the engine on regular petroleum diesel or biodiesel in one tank and then 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 details on straight grease in my blog.

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-- simply put it in and go. It also has much better cold-weather residential or commercial properties than SVO (however not as great as petro-diesel-- see Using biodiesel in winter season). Unlike SVO,

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

Biodiesel is a tidy, safe, ready-to-use, alternative fuel, whereas it's fair to state that many SVO systems are still speculative and need further 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 on where you live). And unlike SVO, it has actually to be processed first.

But the large 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 grease, utilized, cooked), which lots of people with SVO systems use because it's low-cost or totally free for the taking. With WVO food particles and pollutants and water need to be removed, and it probably ought to be deacidified too. Biodieselers state, "If I'm going to have to do all that I might as well make biodiesel rather." But SVO types scoff at that-- it's much less processing than making biodiesel, they say. To each his own.