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-- much better for the environment and much better for health.

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

Straight vegetable oil fuel (SVO) systems can be a clean, efficient and economical option. Unlike biodiesel, with SVO you need to customize the engine. The best way is to fit a professional singletank SVO system with replacement injectors and glowplugs optimised for veg-oil, along with .

With the German Elsbett single-tank SVO system for instance you can use petro-diesel, biodiesel or SVO, in any mix. Just launch and go, stop and change off, like any other automobile. 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 need to begin 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 grease systems in my blog.

3. Biodiesel or SVO?

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

it's backed by lots of long-term tests in lots of countries, including countless miles on the road.

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 additional development.

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

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

Anyway you have to process SVO too, particularly WVO (waste veggie oil, utilized, prepared), which lots of people with SVO systems utilize due to the fact that it's low-cost or free for the taking. With WVO food particles and pollutants and water need to be removed, and it probably ought to be deacidified too. Biodieselers state, "If I'm going to need to do all that I may too make biodiesel rather." But SVO types discount that-- it's much less processing than making biodiesel, they state. To each his own.