Make your own Biodiesel Part 2

Anybody can make biodiesel. It’s easy, you can make it in your kitchen– 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 utilized cooking oil it’s not only cheap however you’ll be recycling a problematic waste product. Most importantly is the GREAT feeling of freedom, independence and empowerment it will give you. Here’s how to do it– everything you need to understand.

Straight vegetable oil fuel (SVO) systems can be a tidy, efficient and economical alternative. Unlike biodiesel, with SVO you have 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 example you can use petro-diesel, biodiesel or SVO, in any combination. Just launch and go, stop and switch 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 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 switch 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 advantages 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 likewise has much better cold-weather residential or commercial properties than SVO (but not as good as petro-diesel– see Using biodiesel in winter). Unlike SVO,

it’s backed by many long-lasting tests in lots of countries, consisting of countless miles on the roadway.

Biodiesel is a tidy, safe, ready-to-use, alternative fuel, whereas it’s fair to state that numerous SVO systems are still speculative and require additional advancement.

On the other hand, biodiesel can be more costly, 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 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 do not mind– they make a supply weekly or once a month and quickly get utilized to it. Many have been doing it for many years.

Anyway you have to process SVO too, particularly WVO (waste grease, utilized, cooked), which many individuals with SVO systems utilize since it’s cheap or totally free for the taking. With WVO food particles and impurities and water need to be eliminated, and it probably should be deacidified too. Biodieselers say, “If I’m going to need to do all that I might too make biodiesel instead.” But SVO types that– it’s much less processing than making biodiesel, they state. To each his own.