Anybody can make biodiesel. It's simple, you can make it in your and it's BETTER than the petro-diesel fuel the big oil business offer 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 inexpensive but you'll be recycling a problematic waste product. Best of all is the GREAT sensation of liberty, self-reliance and empowerment it will give you. Here's how to do it-- everything you need to understand.

Straight grease fuel (SVO) systems can be a clean, effective and economical choice. Unlike biodiesel, with SVO you need to customize the engine. The very best way is to fit an expert singletank SVO system with replacement injectors and glowplugs optimised for veg-oil, in addition to fuel heating.

With the German Elsbett single-tank SVO system for instance you can use petro-diesel, biodiesel or SVO, in any combination. Just begin up 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 likewise two-tank SVO systems which pre-heat the oil to make it thinner. You need to begin 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 switch back to petro- or biodiesel before you stop the engine, or you'll coke up the injectors.

More details on straight grease systems in my blog.

3. Biodiesel or SVO?

Biodiesel has some clear advantages over SVO: it operates in any diesel, without any conversion or adjustments to the engine or the fuel system-- just put it in and go. It also has better cold-weather homes than SVO (but not as good as petro-diesel-- see Using biodiesel in winter). Unlike SVO,

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

Biodiesel is a clean, safe, ready-to-use, alternative fuel, whereas it's fair to state that lots of SVO systems are still experimental and need further development.

On the other hand, biodiesel can be more pricey, depending 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 first.

But the big and rapidly growing worldwide band of homebrewers don't mind-- they make a supply every week or once a month and soon get used to it. Many have actually been doing it for many years.

Anyway you have to process SVO too, especially WVO (waste grease, utilized, prepared), which many people with SVO systems utilize since it's inexpensive or complimentary for the taking. With WVO food particles and pollutants and water must be removed, and it probably needs to be deacidified too. Biodieselers say, "If I'm going to need to do all that I may as well make biodiesel instead." But SVO types scoff at that-- it's much less processing than making biodiesel, they state. To each his own.