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 big oil companies offer you. Your diesel motor will run better and last longer on your home-made fuel, and it's much cleaner-- much better for the environment and much better for health.

If you make it from used cooking oil it's not only inexpensive but you'll be recycling a frustrating waste item. Most importantly is the GREAT feeling of flexibility, self-reliance and empowerment it will provide you. Here's how to do it-- everything you require to understand.

Straight veggie oil fuel (SVO) systems can be a clean, efficient and economical choice. Unlike biodiesel, with SVO you need to customize the engine. The very best 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 circumstances 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 ordinary 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 vegetable oil systems in my blog.

3. Biodiesel or SVO?

has some clear advantages over SVO: it operates 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 great as petro-diesel-- see Using biodiesel in winter season). Unlike SVO,

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

Biodiesel is a clean, safe, ready-to-use, alternative fuel, whereas it's reasonable to say that many SVO systems are still speculative and need further advancement.

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 brand-new oil or used oil (and depending on where you live). And unlike SVO, it needs to be processed initially.

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

Anyway you need to process SVO too, particularly WVO (waste vegetable oil, used, prepared), which lots of people with SVO systems utilize due to the fact that it's cheap or totally free for the taking. With WVO food particles and impurities and water need to be removed, and it most likely ought to be deacidified too. Biodieselers say, "If I'm going to need to do all that I might too make biodiesel instead." But SVO types discount that-- it's much less processing than making biodiesel, they say. To each his own.