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 big 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 much better for health.

If you make it from utilized cooking oil it's not only low-cost but you'll be recycling a item. Best of all is the GREAT sensation of flexibility, independence and empowerment it will give you. Here's how to do it-- whatever you require to understand.

Straight vegetable oil fuel (SVO) systems can be a clean, effective and cost-effective option. Unlike biodiesel, with SVO you have to customize the engine. The finest method 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 instance you can utilize petro-diesel, biodiesel or SVO, in any combination. 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 start the engine on common petroleum diesel or biodiesel in one tank and then change 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.

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 properties than SVO (but not as great as petro-diesel-- see Using biodiesel in winter). Unlike SVO,

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

Biodiesel is a tidy, safe, ready-to-use, alternative fuel, whereas it's fair to say that numerous SVO systems are still speculative and need additional development.

On the other hand, biodiesel can be more costly, 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 needs to be processed first.

But the big and rapidly growing worldwide 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 been doing it for years.

Anyway you have to process SVO too, particularly WVO (waste grease, utilized, cooked), which many individuals with SVO systems utilize because it's low-cost or totally free for the taking. With WVO food particles and pollutants and water should be removed, and it probably should be deacidified too. Biodieselers say, "If I'm going to need to do all that I might also make biodiesel instead." But SVO types discount that-- it's much less processing than making biodiesel, they say. To each his own.