Anybody can make biodiesel. It's easy, you can make it in your kitchen 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-- better for the environment and better for health.

If you make it from utilized cooking oil it's not only cheap however you'll be recycling a frustrating waste product. Best of all is the GREAT feeling of liberty, self-reliance and empowerment it will provide you. Here's how to do it-- whatever you need to know.

Straight grease fuel (SVO) systems can be a tidy, reliable and cost-effective option. Unlike biodiesel, with SVO you need to customize the engine. The very 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 instance 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 uses an Elsbett single-tank system. More

There are also two-tank SVO systems which pre-heat the oil to make it thinner. You have to start the engine on normal 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 site.

3. Biodiesel or SVO?

Biodiesel has some clear benefits over SVO: it operates in any diesel, with no conversion 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 (but not as excellent as petro-diesel-- see Using biodiesel in winter). Unlike SVO,

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

Biodiesel is a clean, safe, ready-to-use, alternative fuel, whereas it's reasonable to state that numerous SVO systems are still experimental and require additional development.

On the other hand, biodiesel can be more pricey, 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 big and quickly growing worldwide band of homebrewers do not mind-- they make a supply each week or when 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, cooked), which many individuals with SVO systems use because it's low-cost or free for the taking. With WVO food and impurities and water should be gotten rid of, and it probably needs to be deacidified too. Biodieselers say, "If I'm going to have to do all that I may as well make biodiesel rather." But SVO types scoff at that-- it's much less processing than making biodiesel, they say. To each his own.