Make your own Biodiesel Part 2

Anybody can make biodiesel. It’s simple, you can make it in your cooking area– and it’s BETTER than the petro-diesel fuel the big 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 just cheap but you’ll be recycling a problematic waste item. Best of all is the GREAT feeling of flexibility, self-reliance and empowerment it will offer you. Here’s how to do it– whatever you require to know.

Straight grease fuel (SVO) systems can be a clean, efficient and economical option. Unlike biodiesel, with SVO you have to modify the engine. The best way 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 mix. Just start up and go, stop and switch off, like any other automobile. 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 start the engine on ordinary petroleum diesel or biodiesel in one tank and after that switch 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 vegetable 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 residential or commercial properties than SVO (however not as good as petro-diesel– see Using biodiesel in winter season). Unlike SVO,

it’s backed by numerous long-term tests in lots of countries, consisting of millions of miles on the road.

Biodiesel is a clean, safe, ready-to-use, alternative fuel, whereas it’s fair to state that many SVO systems are still experimental and need further advancement.

On the other hand, biodiesel can be more expensive, depending how much you make, what you make it from and whether you’re comparing it with brand-new oil or used oil (and depending on where you live). And unlike SVO, it needs to be processed first.

But the large and quickly growing worldwide band of homebrewers do not mind– they make a supply each week or as soon as a month and quickly get used to it. Many have actually been doing it for years.

Anyway you need to process SVO too, particularly WVO (waste grease, utilized, cooked), which lots of people with SVO systems use due to the fact that it’s inexpensive or free for the taking. With particles and impurities and water must be eliminated, and it probably ought to be deacidified too. Biodieselers say, “If I’m going to need to do all that I might also make biodiesel instead.” But SVO types discount that– it’s much less processing than making biodiesel, they state. To each his own.