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 sell 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 just low-cost however you'll be recycling a troublesome waste product. Most importantly is the GREAT feeling of flexibility, independence and empowerment it will offer you. Here's how to do it-- whatever you require to understand.

Straight vegetable oil fuel (SVO) systems can be a tidy, effective and economical alternative. 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, along with fuel heating.

With the German Elsbett single-tank SVO system for example you can use petro-diesel, biodiesel or SVO, in any combination. Just begin up and go, stop and turn off, like any other cars and truck. Journey to Forever's Toyota TownAce van uses 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 begin the engine on normal 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 info on straight veggie oil systems in my blog site.

3. Biodiesel or SVO?

Biodiesel has some clear advantages over SVO: it works in any diesel, with no conversion or modifications 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 excellent as petro-diesel-- see Using biodiesel in winter season). Unlike SVO,

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

Biodiesel is a tidy, safe, ready-to-use, alternative fuel, whereas it's reasonable to say 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 upon where you live). And unlike SVO, it has to be processed initially.

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

Anyway you have to process SVO too, specifically WVO (waste veggie oil, utilized, prepared), which lots of people with SVO systems use because it's inexpensive or totally free for the taking. With WVO food particles and pollutants and water must be eliminated, and it probably ought to be deacidified too. Biodieselers state, "If I'm going to need to do all that I might too make biodiesel instead." But SVO types belittle that-- it's much less processing than making biodiesel, they state. To each his own.