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 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 used cooking oil it's not only low-cost however you'll be recycling a problematic waste item. Most importantly is the GREAT sensation of freedom, self-reliance and empowerment it will provide you. Here's how to do it-- everything you require to understand.

Straight grease fuel (SVO) systems can be a tidy, reliable and affordable alternative. Unlike biodiesel, with SVO you need to customize the engine. The best way is to fit a professional 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 use petro-diesel, biodiesel or SVO, in any combination. Just launch and go, stop and turn off, like any other vehicle. 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 have to begin the engine on ordinary 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 change 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 operates in any diesel, without any conversion or modifications to the engine or the fuel system-- just put it in and go. It also has better cold-weather homes than SVO (but not as excellent as petro-diesel-- see Using biodiesel in winter). Unlike SVO,

it's backed by numerous long-lasting tests in lots of nations, consisting of countless miles on the road.

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

On the other hand, biodiesel can be more expensive, 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 on where you live). And unlike SVO, it needs to be processed first.

But the large and rapidly growing around the world band of homebrewers don't mind-- they make a supply weekly or as soon as a month and soon get utilized to it. Many have been doing it for many years.

Anyway you have to process SVO too, especially WVO (waste veggie oil, used, cooked), which many people with SVO systems use because it's or free for the taking. With WVO food particles and impurities and water should 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 scoff at that-- it's much less processing than making biodiesel, they say. To each his own.