Anybody can make biodiesel. It's easy, you can make it in your kitchen-- and it's BETTER than the petro-diesel fuel the huge 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 better for health.

If you make it from utilized cooking oil it's not just low-cost but you'll be recycling a troublesome waste item. Most importantly is the GREAT sensation of freedom, independence and empowerment it will offer you. Here's how to do it-- everything you require to understand.

Straight veggie oil fuel (SVO) systems can be a tidy, effective and economical alternative. Unlike biodiesel, with SVO you need to modify the engine. The finest way 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 mix. Just launch and go, stop and change 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 have to start the engine on ordinary 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 info on straight vegetable oil systems in my blog.

3. Biodiesel or SVO?

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

it's backed by numerous long-term tests in lots of nations, including countless 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 experimental and require additional development.

On the other hand, biodiesel can be more expensive, 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 upon where you live). And unlike SVO, it has actually to be processed first.

But the big and rapidly growing worldwide band of homebrewers do not mind-- they make a supply weekly or once a month and quickly get utilized to it. Many have been doing it for years.

Anyway you need to process SVO too, particularly WVO (waste vegetable oil, used, cooked), which many 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 should be removed, and it most likely ought to be deacidified too. Biodieselers state, "If I'm going to have to do all that I may as well make biodiesel rather." But SVO types scoff at that-- it's much less processing than making biodiesel, they say. To each his own.