Anybody can make biodiesel. It's simple, you can make it in your cooking area-- and it's BETTER than the petro-diesel fuel the big oil business sell 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 better for health.
If you make it from used cooking oil it's not just cheap but you'll be recycling a frustrating waste item. Most importantly is the GREAT feeling of liberty, self-reliance and empowerment it will give you. Here's how to do it-- whatever you need to understand.
Straight veggie oil fuel (SVO) systems can be a clean, effective and economical option. Unlike biodiesel, with SVO you have to customize the engine. The best way is to fit an expert 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 instance you can utilize petro-diesel, biodiesel or SVO, in any combination. Just launch and go, stop and turn 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 . You have to begin the engine on regular 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 benefits 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 (but not as good as petro-diesel-- see Using biodiesel in winter season). Unlike SVO,
it's backed by many long-lasting tests in many countries, consisting of millions of miles on the roadway.
Biodiesel is a tidy, safe, ready-to-use, alternative fuel, whereas it's reasonable to state that lots of SVO systems are still speculative and require further advancement.
On the other hand, biodiesel can be more pricey, depending just how much you make, what you make it from and whether you're comparing it with new oil or used oil (and depending upon where you live). And unlike SVO, it has to be processed initially.
But the large and rapidly growing around the world band of homebrewers do not mind-- they make a supply every week or as soon as a month and soon get used to it. Many have been doing it for several years.
Anyway you need to process SVO too, particularly WVO (waste grease, used, prepared), which many people with SVO systems use since it's low-cost 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 state, "If I'm going to have to do all that I might as well make biodiesel rather." But SVO types belittle that-- it's much less processing than making biodiesel, they say. To each his own.
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Make your own Biodiesel Part 2
Shana Fairbairn edited this page 5 months ago