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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 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 used cooking oil it's not just low-cost but you'll be recycling a troublesome 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-- whatever you need to know.

Straight grease fuel (SVO) systems can be a tidy, effective and affordable choice. Unlike biodiesel, with SVO you have to modify 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 example you can use 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 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 information on straight grease systems in my blog.

3. 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-- just put it in and go. It likewise has 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 countries, including millions of miles on the road.

Biodiesel is a tidy, safe, ready-to-use, alternative fuel, whereas it's reasonable to state that numerous SVO systems are still experimental and need more 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 brand-new oil or utilized oil (and depending upon where you live). And unlike SVO, it needs to be processed initially.

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

Anyway you need to process SVO too, specifically WVO (waste veggie oil, used, prepared), which lots of people with SVO systems use since it's cheap or totally free for the taking. With WVO food particles and impurities and water must be removed, and it probably should be deacidified too. Biodieselers state, "If I'm going to have to do all that I might too make biodiesel rather." But SVO types discount that-- it's much less processing than making biodiesel, they state. To each his own.