1 Make your own Biodiesel Part 2

Grazyna Everhart edited this page 4 months ago

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 business sell 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 used cooking oil it's not just low-cost but you'll be recycling a frustrating waste product. Most importantly is the GREAT feeling of freedom, self-reliance and empowerment it will provide you. Here's how to do it-- everything you need to understand.

Straight grease fuel (SVO) systems can be a clean, efficient and affordable choice. Unlike biodiesel, with SVO you need to modify the engine. The best method is to fit a professional singletank SVO system with replacement injectors and glowplugs optimised for veg-oil, as well as fuel heating.

With the German Elsbett single-tank SVO system for example you can utilize petro-diesel, biodiesel or SVO, in any mix. Just start up and go, stop and turn off, like any other cars and truck. 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 begin the engine on regular 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 information on straight grease systems in my blog.

3. Biodiesel or SVO?

Biodiesel has some clear benefits 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 homes than SVO (but not as excellent as petro-diesel-- see Using biodiesel in winter season). Unlike SVO,

it's backed by numerous long-term tests in many countries, consisting of millions of miles on the roadway.

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

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 or used oil (and depending upon where you live). And unlike SVO, it needs to be processed first.

But the big and quickly growing around the world band of homebrewers don't 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 several years.

Anyway you need to process SVO too, especially WVO (waste grease, used, prepared), which lots of people with SVO systems utilize since it's low-cost or totally free for the taking. With WVO food particles and impurities and water need to be gotten rid of, and it probably must be deacidified too. Biodieselers state, "If I'm going to need to do all that I might too make biodiesel rather." But SVO types belittle that-- it's much less processing than making biodiesel, they say. To each his own.