Anybody can make biodiesel. It's easy, you can make it in your kitchen area-- and it's BETTER than the petro-diesel fuel the huge oil business sell you. Your diesel motor will run much 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 used cooking oil it's not only low-cost however you'll be recycling a problematic waste product. Best of all is the GREAT feeling of freedom, independence and empowerment it will offer you. Here's how to do it-- everything you require to understand.

Straight vegetable oil fuel (SVO) systems can be a tidy, reliable and economical alternative. Unlike biodiesel, with SVO you need to customize the engine. The very best way 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 example you can use petro-diesel, biodiesel or SVO, in any mix. Just start up and go, stop and change off, like any other automobile. 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 need to start 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 info on straight grease systems in my blog site.

3. Biodiesel or SVO?

Biodiesel has some clear benefits over SVO: it works in any diesel, without any 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 (but not as great as petro-diesel-- see Using biodiesel in winter). Unlike SVO,

it's backed by lots of long-lasting tests in many countries, 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 more advancement.

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 oil (and depending upon where you live). And unlike SVO, it needs to be processed first.

But the large and rapidly growing around the world band of homebrewers don't mind-- they make a supply each week or once a month and soon get utilized to it. Many have actually been doing it for years.

Anyway you need to process SVO too, particularly WVO (waste grease, utilized, cooked), which lots of people with SVO systems utilize due to the fact that it's inexpensive or free for the taking. With WVO food particles and impurities and water must be eliminated, and it probably must be deacidified too. Biodieselers state, "If I'm going to have to do all that I might also make biodiesel instead." But SVO types scoff at that-- it's much less processing than making biodiesel, they state. To each his own.