Anybody can make biodiesel. It's easy, you can make it in your cooking area-- 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-- better for the environment and better for health.

If you make it from utilized cooking oil it's not just low-cost but you'll be recycling a frustrating waste product. Best of all is the GREAT sensation of flexibility, independence and empowerment it will provide you. Here's how to do it-- whatever you require to understand.

Straight veggie oil fuel (SVO) systems can be a clean, reliable and economical alternative. Unlike biodiesel, with SVO you have to modify the engine. The best method 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 switch off, like any other vehicle. Journey to Forever's Toyota TownAce van utilizes an Elsbett single-tank system. More

There are also two-tank which pre-heat the oil to make it thinner. You have to start the engine on ordinary petroleum diesel or biodiesel in one tank and then 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 info on straight veggie oil systems in my blog site.

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 likewise has better cold-weather properties than SVO (but not as excellent as petro-diesel-- see Using biodiesel in winter season). Unlike SVO,

it's backed by many long-lasting tests in lots of nations, including millions of miles on the road.

Biodiesel is a clean, safe, ready-to-use, alternative fuel, whereas it's reasonable to state that lots of 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 utilized oil (and depending upon where you live). And unlike SVO, it needs to be processed first.

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

Anyway you need to process SVO too, specifically WVO (waste vegetable oil, utilized, cooked), which many individuals with SVO systems use because it's cheap or free for the taking. With WVO food particles and impurities and water should be eliminated, and it probably needs to be deacidified too. Biodieselers say, "If I'm going to need 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 state. To each his own.