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 companies sell you. Your diesel motor will run much 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 cheap however you'll be recycling a problematic waste item. Most importantly is the GREAT feeling of flexibility, self-reliance and empowerment it will give you. Here's how to do it-- everything you need to .
Straight vegetable oil fuel (SVO) systems can be a clean, efficient and cost-effective choice. Unlike biodiesel, with SVO you need to customize the engine. The very best method 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 circumstances you can use petro-diesel, biodiesel or SVO, in any combination. Just start up and go, stop and change off, like any other car. 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 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 info on straight grease systems in my blog.
3. Biodiesel or SVO?
Biodiesel has some clear benefits over SVO: it operates in any diesel, with no conversion or adjustments to the engine or the fuel system-- just put it in and go. It also has better cold-weather properties than SVO (but not as good as petro-diesel-- see Using biodiesel in winter). Unlike SVO,
it's backed by lots of long-lasting tests in lots of countries, consisting of millions of miles on the road.
Biodiesel is a tidy, safe, ready-to-use, alternative fuel, whereas it's fair to state that lots of SVO systems are still experimental and need additional 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 brand-new oil or utilized oil (and depending on where you live). And unlike SVO, it needs to be processed initially.
But the big and quickly growing worldwide band of homebrewers don't mind-- they make a supply weekly or when a month and quickly get used to it. Many have been doing it for years.
Anyway you have to process SVO too, specifically WVO (waste grease, used, cooked), which many individuals with SVO systems utilize since it's cheap or totally free for the taking. With WVO food particles and pollutants and water should be eliminated, and it probably must be deacidified too. Biodieselers say, "If I'm going to have to do all that I may also make biodiesel instead." 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
Buster Mackay edited this page 3 months ago