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 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 only cheap but you'll be recycling a bothersome waste product. Best of all is the GREAT sensation of liberty, self-reliance and empowerment it will offer you. Here's how to do it-- whatever you require to know.

Straight vegetable oil fuel (SVO) systems can be a clean, reliable and economical alternative. Unlike biodiesel, with SVO you have to customize the engine. The very 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 utilize petro-diesel, biodiesel or SVO, in any combination. Just launch and go, stop and turn off, like any other cars and truck. Journey to Forever's Toyota TownAce van uses an Elsbett single-tank system. More

There are also two-tank SVO systems which pre-heat the oil to make it thinner. You need to start the engine on regular petroleum diesel or in one tank and then switch 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 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 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 nations, consisting of 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 experimental and need further 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 new oil or utilized oil (and depending on where you live). And unlike SVO, it needs to be processed initially.

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

Anyway you need to process SVO too, especially WVO (waste veggie oil, utilized, prepared), which many individuals with SVO systems use since it's low-cost or free for the taking. With WVO food particles and impurities and water should be eliminated, and it most likely should be deacidified too. Biodieselers state, "If I'm going to need to do all that I might also make biodiesel rather." But SVO types belittle that-- it's much less processing than making biodiesel, they say. To each his own.