Anybody can make biodiesel. It's simple, you can make it in your kitchen-- 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-- much better for the environment and much better for health.

If you make it from utilized cooking oil it's not only low-cost however you'll be recycling a bothersome waste product. Most importantly is the GREAT feeling of liberty, self-reliance and empowerment it will give you. Here's how to do it-- whatever you require to know.

Straight veggie oil fuel (SVO) systems can be a tidy, efficient and cost-effective alternative. Unlike biodiesel, with SVO you have to customize 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 combination. Just launch and go, stop and turn off, like any other automobile. 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 normal 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 information on straight veggie oil systems in my blog.

3. Biodiesel or SVO?

Biodiesel has some clear benefits over SVO: it operates in any diesel, with no conversion or modifications to the engine or the fuel system-- just put it in and go. It also has better cold-weather homes than SVO (however not as excellent as petro-diesel-- see Using biodiesel in winter). Unlike SVO,

it's backed by lots of long-lasting tests in numerous nations, including millions of miles on the road.

Biodiesel is a tidy, safe, ready-to-use, alternative fuel, whereas it's reasonable to say that numerous SVO systems are still speculative and need more development.

On the other hand, biodiesel can be more expensive, depending just 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 has to be processed first.

But the big and around the world band of homebrewers do not mind-- they make a supply every week or as soon as a month and soon get used to it. Many have actually been doing it for many years.

Anyway you have to process SVO too, particularly WVO (waste vegetable oil, used, cooked), which lots of people with SVO systems utilize because it's cheap or complimentary for the taking. With WVO food particles and impurities and water need to be removed, and it most likely must be deacidified too. Biodieselers say, "If I'm going to have to do all that I might as well make biodiesel rather." But SVO types discount that-- it's much less processing than making biodiesel, they state. To each his own.