Anybody can make biodiesel. It's easy, you can make it in your cooking area-- and it's BETTER than the petro-diesel fuel the huge oil companies 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 inexpensive but you'll be recycling a problematic waste product. Most importantly 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 tidy, effective and economical choice. Unlike biodiesel, with SVO you have to customize the engine. The finest 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 launch and go, stop and turn off, like any other vehicle. 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 have to begin the engine on ordinary 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.

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-- simply put it in and go. It also has better cold-weather homes than SVO (but not as excellent as petro-diesel-- see Using biodiesel in winter). Unlike SVO,

it's backed by lots of long-lasting tests in many nations, consisting of countless miles on the roadway.

Biodiesel is a clean, safe, ready-to-use, alternative fuel, whereas it's reasonable to state that lots of SVO systems are still experimental and need further 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 new oil or used oil (and depending upon where you live). And unlike SVO, it needs to be processed initially.

But the large and quickly growing worldwide band of homebrewers don't mind-- they make a supply weekly or once a month and quickly get used to it. Many have been doing it for several years.

Anyway you have to process SVO too, particularly WVO (waste grease, utilized, prepared), which lots of people with SVO systems utilize since it's inexpensive or complimentary for the taking. With WVO food particles and pollutants and water need to be gotten rid of, and it probably should be deacidified too. Biodieselers state, "If I'm going to have to do all that I may also make biodiesel rather." But SVO types belittle that-- it's much less processing than making biodiesel, they say. To each his own.