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 sell 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 much better for health.

If you make it from utilized cooking oil it's not just cheap however you'll be recycling a problematic waste product. Best of all is the GREAT sensation of freedom, self-reliance and empowerment it will give you. Here's how to do it-- whatever you require to understand.

Straight veggie oil fuel (SVO) systems can be a tidy, reliable and cost-effective option. Unlike biodiesel, with SVO you need to customize the engine. The best way is to fit an expert 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 use petro-diesel, biodiesel or SVO, in any mix. Just launch and go, stop and turn off, like any other car. Journey to Forever's Toyota TownAce van uses 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 ordinary petroleum diesel or biodiesel in one tank and then 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 details on straight grease systems in my blog.

3. Biodiesel or SVO?

Biodiesel has some clear benefits over SVO: it works in any diesel, without any conversion or modifications to the engine or the fuel system-- simply put it in and go. It also has better cold-weather residential or commercial properties than SVO (however not as excellent as petro-diesel-- see Using biodiesel in winter). Unlike SVO,

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

Biodiesel is a tidy, safe, ready-to-use, alternative fuel, whereas it's fair to state that many SVO systems are still experimental and require additional advancement.

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

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

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