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 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 used cooking oil it's not only low-cost but you'll be recycling a troublesome waste item. Best of all is the GREAT sensation of freedom, self-reliance and empowerment it will offer you. Here's how to do it-- whatever you need to know.

Straight grease fuel (SVO) systems can be a clean, effective and economical choice. Unlike biodiesel, with SVO you have to modify the engine. The finest way is to fit an expert 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 example you can use petro-diesel, biodiesel or SVO, in any mix. Just begin up and go, stop and switch off, like any other cars and truck. Journey to Forever's Toyota TownAce van utilizes an Elsbett single-tank system. More

There are also two-tank SVO systems which pre-heat the oil to make it . You have to start the engine on normal 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 info on straight grease systems in my blog site.

3. Biodiesel or SVO?

Biodiesel has some clear benefits over SVO: it operates in any diesel, without any conversion or modifications to the engine or the fuel system-- just 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 season). Unlike SVO,

it's backed by many long-lasting tests in numerous countries, including countless miles on the roadway.

Biodiesel is a tidy, safe, ready-to-use, alternative fuel, whereas it's reasonable to state that lots of SVO systems are still speculative and need more development.

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 used oil (and depending on where you live). And unlike SVO, it needs to be processed initially.

But the big and quickly growing worldwide band of homebrewers do not mind-- they make a supply each week or as soon as a month and soon get used to it. Many have actually been doing it for several years.

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