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 offer 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 utilized cooking oil it's not only low-cost however you'll be recycling a problematic waste item. Best of all is the GREAT feeling of liberty, self-reliance and empowerment it will provide you. Here's how to do it-- whatever you need to understand.

Straight vegetable oil fuel (SVO) systems can be a clean, reliable and affordable alternative. Unlike biodiesel, with SVO you need to modify the engine. The very 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 SVO system for example you can use petro-diesel, biodiesel or SVO, in any mix. Just launch and go, stop and turn off, like any other vehicle. Journey to Forever's Toyota TownAce van utilizes an Elsbett single-tank system. More

There are likewise two-tank SVO systems which pre-heat the oil to make it thinner. You have to begin the engine on normal petroleum diesel or biodiesel in one tank and then change 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 details on straight grease systems in my blog site.

3. Biodiesel or SVO?

Biodiesel has some clear benefits over SVO: it works in any diesel, with no 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 excellent as petro-diesel-- see Using biodiesel in winter). Unlike SVO,

it's backed by lots of long-term tests in many nations, including millions of miles on the roadway.

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

On the other hand, biodiesel can be more costly, depending 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 needs to be processed initially.

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

Anyway you have to process SVO too, especially WVO (waste vegetable oil, utilized, prepared), which lots of people with SVO systems utilize since it's inexpensive or free for the taking. With WVO food particles and pollutants and water should be eliminated, and it most likely should 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.