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 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 much better for health.

If you make it from used cooking oil it's not just but you'll be recycling a problematic waste item. Best of all is the GREAT feeling of liberty, independence and empowerment it will give you. Here's how to do it-- whatever you require to understand.

Straight vegetable oil fuel (SVO) systems can be a tidy, effective and economical option. Unlike biodiesel, with SVO you have to customize the engine. The finest way is to fit an expert singletank SVO system with replacement injectors and glowplugs optimised for veg-oil, in addition to fuel heating.

With the German Elsbett single-tank SVO system for example you can utilize petro-diesel, biodiesel or SVO, in any mix. Just launch and go, stop and change off, like any other vehicle. 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 have to start 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 information on straight grease systems in my blog site.

3. Biodiesel or SVO?

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

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

Biodiesel is a clean, safe, ready-to-use, alternative fuel, whereas it's fair to state that lots of SVO systems are still experimental and need additional development.

On the other hand, biodiesel can be more expensive, depending how much you make, what you make it from and whether you're comparing it with brand-new oil or utilized oil (and depending on where you live). And unlike SVO, it has to be processed initially.

But the big and rapidly growing around the world band of homebrewers do not mind-- they make a supply every week or when a month and quickly get used to it. Many have been doing it for several years.

Anyway you need to process SVO too, especially WVO (waste vegetable oil, used, cooked), which numerous individuals with SVO systems use because it's low-cost or free for the taking. With WVO food particles and pollutants and water should be removed, and it most likely ought to be deacidified too. Biodieselers state, "If I'm going to need to do all that I might too make biodiesel rather." But SVO types scoff at that-- it's much less processing than making biodiesel, they say. To each his own.