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 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 better for health.

If you make it from used cooking oil it's not only cheap but you'll be recycling a troublesome waste product. Best of all is the GREAT sensation of liberty, self-reliance and empowerment it will offer you. Here's how to do it-- everything you need to know.

Straight vegetable oil fuel (SVO) systems can be a clean, reliable and affordable choice. Unlike biodiesel, with SVO you need to customize the engine. The very best way 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 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 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 switch 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 modifications to the engine or the fuel system-- simply put it in and go. It likewise has much better cold-weather homes than SVO (however not as excellent as petro-diesel-- see Using biodiesel in winter season). Unlike SVO,

it's backed by many long-lasting tests in numerous 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 numerous SVO systems are still speculative and need further development.

On the other hand, biodiesel can be more pricey, depending just 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 first.

But the big and rapidly growing worldwide band of homebrewers do not mind-- they make a supply weekly or once a month and quickly get utilized to it. Many have been doing it for many years.

Anyway you need to process SVO too, particularly WVO (waste vegetable oil, used, cooked), which lots of people with SVO systems use because it's low-cost or free for the taking. With WVO food particles and impurities and water must be gotten rid of, and it most likely ought to be too. Biodieselers state, "If I'm going to have to do all that I might also make biodiesel instead." But SVO types discount that-- it's much less processing than making biodiesel, they say. To each his own.