Anybody can make biodiesel. It's simple, you can make it in your kitchen area-- and it's BETTER than the petro-diesel fuel the huge oil companies offer 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 but you'll be recycling a frustrating waste item. Best of all is the GREAT feeling of liberty, self-reliance and empowerment it will give you. Here's how to do it-- everything you require to understand.

Straight veggie oil fuel (SVO) systems can be a tidy, efficient and affordable choice. Unlike biodiesel, with SVO you need to customize the engine. The finest way is to fit a professional 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 example you can utilize petro-diesel, biodiesel or SVO, in any combination. Just launch and go, stop and change off, like any other vehicle. Journey to Forever's Toyota TownAce van uses an Elsbett single-tank system. More

There are likewise two-tank SVO systems which pre-heat the oil to make it thinner. You have to begin the engine on normal petroleum diesel or biodiesel in one tank and then switch 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 vegetable oil systems in my blog.

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 also has much better cold-weather properties than SVO (but not as excellent as petro-diesel-- see Using biodiesel in winter season). Unlike SVO,

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

Biodiesel is a clean, safe, ready-to-use, alternative fuel, whereas it's fair to state that lots of SVO systems are still experimental and require further advancement.

On the other hand, biodiesel can be more expensive, 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 initially.

But the large 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 been doing it for years.

Anyway you have to process SVO too, especially WVO (waste grease, utilized, prepared), which lots of people with SVO systems use since 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 should be deacidified too. Biodieselers say, "If I'm going to have to do all that I might as well make biodiesel rather." But SVO types belittle that-- it's much less processing than making biodiesel, they say. To each his own.