Anybody can make biodiesel. It's easy, 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-- better for the environment and better for health.
If you make it from used cooking oil it's not just inexpensive but you'll be recycling a bothersome waste product. Best of all is the GREAT feeling of flexibility, independence and empowerment it will give you. Here's how to do it-- everything you require to know.
Straight grease fuel (SVO) systems can be a clean, reliable and cost-effective option. Unlike biodiesel, with SVO you need to customize the engine. The best method is to fit a professional 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 example you can utilize petro-diesel, biodiesel or SVO, in any combination. Just launch and go, stop and switch off, like any other vehicle. Journey to Forever's Toyota TownAce van uses 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 begin the engine on regular 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 info on straight vegetable oil systems in my blog site.
3. Biodiesel or SVO?
Biodiesel has some clear advantages over SVO: it works in any diesel, without any or adjustments 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 numerous long-term tests in lots of nations, consisting of millions of miles on the roadway.
Biodiesel is a tidy, safe, ready-to-use, alternative fuel, whereas it's reasonable to state that many SVO systems are still experimental and need more development.
On the other hand, biodiesel can be more costly, 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 needs to be processed first.
But the large and rapidly growing around the world band of homebrewers don't 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 several years.
Anyway you need to process SVO too, specifically WVO (waste veggie oil, used, cooked), which lots of people with SVO systems utilize because it's low-cost or complimentary for the taking. With WVO food particles and impurities and water must be eliminated, and it most likely must be deacidified too. Biodieselers state, "If I'm going to need to do all that I may too make biodiesel rather." But SVO types belittle that-- it's much less processing than making biodiesel, they say. To each his own.
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Make your own Biodiesel Part 2
Shelli Fender edited this page 1 week ago