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 offer you. Your diesel motor will run much better and last longer on your home-made fuel, and it's much cleaner-- much better for the environment and better for health.
If you make it from used cooking oil it's not just cheap but you'll be recycling a troublesome waste product. Most importantly is the GREAT feeling of flexibility, independence and empowerment it will give you. Here's how to do it-- whatever you need to understand.
Straight vegetable oil fuel (SVO) systems can be a clean, efficient and economical option. Unlike biodiesel, with SVO you need to customize the engine. The finest 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 circumstances you can utilize petro-diesel, biodiesel or SVO, in any mix. Just begin up and go, stop and switch off, like any other car. 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 thinner. You have to begin the engine on common 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 vegetable oil systems in my blog site.
3. Biodiesel or SVO?
Biodiesel has some clear advantages over SVO: it operates in any diesel, without any conversion or modifications to the engine or the fuel system-- simply put it in and go. It also has much better cold-weather residential or commercial properties than SVO (however not as good as petro-diesel-- see Using biodiesel in winter). Unlike SVO,
it's backed by lots of long-term tests in lots of nations, including millions of miles on the road.
Biodiesel is a tidy, safe, ready-to-use, alternative fuel, whereas it's fair to state that many SVO systems are still experimental and need further 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 brand-new oil or used oil (and depending upon where you live). And unlike SVO, it has actually to be processed first.
But the large and rapidly growing worldwide band of homebrewers don't mind-- they make a supply each week or when a month and quickly get utilized to it. Many have actually been doing it for several years.
Anyway you need to process SVO too, particularly WVO (waste grease, utilized, cooked), which many people with SVO systems utilize since it's low-cost or totally free for the taking. With WVO food particles and impurities and water should be eliminated, and it probably should be deacidified too. Biodieselers say, "If I'm going to need to do all that I may too make biodiesel rather." But SVO types discount that-- it's much less processing than making biodiesel, they state. To each his own.
