Anybody can make biodiesel. It's easy, you can make it in your kitchen-- and it's BETTER than the petro-diesel fuel the big oil business offer 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 utilized cooking oil it's not just inexpensive but you'll be recycling a frustrating waste product. Most importantly is the GREAT feeling of freedom, self-reliance and empowerment it will offer you. Here's how to do it-- everything you need to understand.

Straight grease fuel (SVO) systems can be a clean, effective and cost-effective option. Unlike biodiesel, with SVO you have to customize the engine. The best method is to fit a professional singletank SVO system with replacement injectors and glowplugs optimised for veg-oil, in addition to fuel heating.

With the German Elsbett single-tank SVO system for circumstances you can use petro-diesel, biodiesel or SVO, in any combination. Just start up and go, stop and switch off, like any other vehicle. Journey to Forever's Toyota TownAce van utilizes 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 regular petroleum diesel or biodiesel in one tank and after that switch 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 works in any diesel, with no conversion or adjustments to the engine or the fuel system-- simply put it in and go. It likewise has much better cold-weather homes than SVO (however not as excellent as petro-diesel-- see Using biodiesel in winter season). 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 reasonable to say that numerous SVO systems are still experimental and require further development.

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 new oil or utilized oil (and depending on where you live). And unlike SVO, it has actually to be processed initially.

But the big and rapidly growing around the world band of homebrewers don't mind-- they make a supply each week or as soon as 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 lots of people with SVO systems utilize because it's cheap or free for the taking. With WVO food particles and pollutants and water need to be gotten rid of, and it most likely ought to be deacidified too. Biodieselers say, "If I'm going to need to do all that I may also make biodiesel instead." But SVO types belittle that-- it's much less processing than making biodiesel, they say. To each his own.