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

If you make it from utilized cooking oil it's not only inexpensive however you'll be recycling a problematic waste product. Best of all is the GREAT feeling of freedom, self-reliance and empowerment it will provide you. Here's how to do it-- everything you need to know.

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

With the German Elsbett single-tank SVO system for circumstances you can use petro-diesel, biodiesel or SVO, in any mix. Just launch and go, stop and turn off, like any other automobile. 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 need 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 change back to petro- or biodiesel before you stop the engine, or you'll coke up the injectors.

More information on straight grease systems in my blog.

3. Biodiesel or SVO?

Biodiesel has some clear advantages over SVO: it works in any diesel, with no conversion or modifications to the engine or the fuel system-- simply put it in and go. It also has much better cold-weather homes than SVO (however not as great as petro-diesel-- see Using biodiesel in winter season). Unlike SVO,

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

Biodiesel is a clean, safe, ready-to-use, alternative fuel, whereas it's reasonable to say that lots of SVO systems are still experimental and require more development.

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 brand-new oil or used oil (and depending upon where you live). And unlike SVO, it has to be processed first.

But the large and quickly growing worldwide band of homebrewers don't mind-- they make a supply every week or as soon as a month and quickly get used to it. Many have been doing it for several years.

Anyway you have to process SVO too, specifically WVO (waste veggie oil, utilized, cooked), which many people with SVO systems utilize because it's cheap or totally free for the taking. With WVO food particles and pollutants and water must be removed, and it probably needs to be deacidified too. Biodieselers say, "If I'm going to need to do all that I may as well make biodiesel instead." But SVO types belittle that-- it's much less processing than making biodiesel, they state. To each his own.