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 business sell 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 better for health.

If you make it from used cooking oil it's not only low-cost but you'll be recycling a problematic waste item. Best of all is the GREAT feeling of freedom, self-reliance 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 clean, efficient and affordable option. Unlike biodiesel, with SVO you need to customize the engine. The finest way 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 example you can utilize petro-diesel, biodiesel or SVO, in any combination. Just launch and go, stop and switch off, like any other car. 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 start the engine on normal petroleum diesel or biodiesel in one tank and after that 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 details on straight grease systems in my blog site.

3. Biodiesel or SVO?

Biodiesel has some clear advantages over SVO: it operates in any diesel, without any conversion or adjustments to the engine or the fuel system-- just put it in and go. It likewise has much better cold-weather residential or commercial properties than SVO (but not as great as petro-diesel-- see Using biodiesel in winter season). Unlike SVO,

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

Biodiesel is a tidy, safe, ready-to-use, alternative fuel, whereas it's reasonable to say that lots of SVO systems are still speculative and require additional development.

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

But the big and rapidly growing worldwide band of do not mind-- they make a supply every week or when a month and quickly get used to it. Many have been doing it for several years.

Anyway you need to process SVO too, particularly WVO (waste veggie oil, 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 impurities and water need to be eliminated, and it probably must be deacidified too. Biodieselers state, "If I'm going to need to do all that I may as well make biodiesel rather." But SVO types discount that-- it's much less processing than making biodiesel, they state. To each his own.