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 sell you. Your diesel motor will run better and last longer on your home-made fuel, and it's much cleaner-- better for the environment and better for health.
If you make it from used cooking oil it's not just inexpensive but you'll be recycling a problematic waste product. Most importantly is the GREAT feeling of flexibility, self-reliance 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, efficient and economical option. Unlike biodiesel, with SVO you have to customize the engine. The very best method 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 combination. Just begin up and go, stop and switch off, like any other automobile. Journey to Forever's Toyota TownAce van uses 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 start the engine on common 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 switch back to petro- or biodiesel before you stop the engine, or you'll coke up the injectors.
More details on straight veggie oil systems in my blog.
3. Biodiesel or SVO?
Biodiesel has some clear benefits over SVO: it works in any diesel, without any conversion or adjustments to the engine or the fuel system-- just put it in and go. It likewise has much better cold-weather residential or commercial properties than SVO (however not as excellent as petro-diesel-- see Using biodiesel in winter season). Unlike SVO,
it's backed by many long-lasting tests in numerous countries, including countless miles on the roadway.
Biodiesel is a clean, safe, ready-to-use, alternative fuel, whereas it's reasonable to state that numerous SVO systems are still speculative and require further 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 brand-new oil or used oil (and depending upon where you live). And unlike SVO, it has to be processed first.
But the big and quickly growing worldwide band of homebrewers do not mind-- they make a supply weekly or once a month and soon get utilized to it. Many have actually been doing it for years.
Anyway you need to process SVO too, particularly WVO (waste grease, used, cooked), which lots of people with SVO systems use since it's inexpensive or free for the taking. With WVO food particles and pollutants and water should be gotten rid of, and it probably must be deacidified too. Biodieselers say, "If I'm going to have to do all that I might too make biodiesel instead." But SVO types belittle that-- it's much less processing than making biodiesel, they state. To each his own.
