Make your own Biodiesel Part 1

There are at least three ways to run a diesel motor on biofuel using veggie oils, animal fats or both. All 3 are utilized with both fresh and secondhand oils.

1. Use the oil just as it is– usually called SVO fuel (straight grease);

2. Mix it with kerosene (paraffin) or petroleum diesel fuel, or with biodiesel, or mix it with a solvent, or with gasoline;

3. Convert it to biodiesel.

The very first 2 techniques sound easiest, but, as so typically in life, it’s not rather that simple.

1. Mixing it

Grease is far more thick (thicker) than either petro-diesel or biodiesel. The function of mixing it or mixing it with other fuels is to reduce the viscosity to make it thinner so that it flows more freely through the fuel system into the combustion chamber.

If you’re blending veg-oil with petroleum diesel or kerosene (exact same as # 1 diesel) you’re still utilizing fossilfuel– cleaner than the majority of, but still unclean enough, numerous would state. Still, for every gallon of

grease you utilize, that’s one gallon of fossil-fuel saved, and that much less climate-changing carbon in the environment.

People utilize various blends, ranging from 10% grease and 90% petro-diesel to 90% vegetable oil and 10% petro-diesel. Some people just utilize it that way, launch and go, without pre-heating it (which makes veg-oil much thinner), or even utilize pure grease without pre-heating it, which would make it much thinner.

You may get away with it with an older Mercedes 5-cylinder IDI diesel, which is an extremely difficult and tolerant motor– it will not like it but you probably will not kill it. Otherwise, it’s not sensible.

To do it properly you’ll need what totals up to an SVO system with fuel pre-heating anyway, ideally using pure petro-diesel or biodiesel for starts and stops. (See next.) In which case there’s no need for the blends.

Blends with different solvents and/or with unleaded gas are “experimental at best”, little or nothing is understood about their on the combustion qualities of the fuel or their long-term impacts on the engine.

Higher viscosity is not the only problem with using grease as fuel. Veg-oil has various chemical homes and combustion qualities from the petroleum diesel fuel for which diesel motor and their fuel systems are designed.

Diesel motor are modern devices with really exact fuel requirements, particularly the more modern, cleaner-burning diesels (see The TDI-SVO controversy).

They are difficult but they’ll just take a lot abuse. There’s no guarantee of it, however utilizing a mix of up to 20% veg-oil of good quality is stated to be safe enough for older diesels, especially in summertime.

Otherwise utilizing veg-oil fuel requires either an expert SVO solution or biodiesel. Mixes and blends are generally a bad compromise. But mixes do have a benefit in cold weather.

As with biodiesel, some kerosene or winterised petro-diesel fuel blended with straight grease decreases the temperature at which it begins to gel. (See Using biodiesel in winter) More about fuel blending and blends.