Anybody can make biodiesel. It's easy, you can make it in your kitchen-- and it's BETTER than the petro-diesel fuel the huge oil companies sell you. Your diesel motor will run much better and last longer on your home-made fuel, and it's much cleaner-- much better for the environment and better for health.
If you make it from utilized cooking oil it's not only low-cost however you'll be recycling a troublesome 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 need to understand.
Straight vegetable oil fuel (SVO) systems can be a tidy, efficient and cost-effective option. Unlike biodiesel, with SVO you have to modify the engine. The very best method is to fit a professional 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 circumstances you can utilize petro-diesel, biodiesel or SVO, in any mix. Just begin up and go, stop and change 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 need to start the engine on common 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 grease systems in my blog.
3. Biodiesel or SVO?
Biodiesel has some clear advantages over SVO: it works in any diesel, with no conversion or modifications to the engine or the fuel system-- just put it in and go. It also has much better cold-weather properties than SVO (however not as great as petro-diesel-- see Using biodiesel in winter season). Unlike SVO,
it's backed by lots of long-term tests in lots of countries, consisting of millions of miles on the road.
Biodiesel is a tidy, safe, ready-to-use, alternative fuel, whereas it's reasonable to state that numerous SVO systems are still experimental and need additional 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 utilized oil (and depending upon where you live). And unlike SVO, it has to be processed initially.
But the big and rapidly growing around the world band of homebrewers don't mind-- they make a supply weekly or when a month and soon get used to it. Many have actually been doing it for several years.
Anyway you have to process SVO too, especially WVO (waste veggie oil, used, cooked), which many individuals with SVO systems use since it's inexpensive or totally free for the taking. With WVO food particles and pollutants and water should be eliminated, and it probably needs to 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 belittle that-- it's much less processing than making biodiesel, they say. To each his own.
