Anybody can make biodiesel. It's easy, 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 much better and last longer on your home-made fuel, and it's much cleaner-- much better for the environment and much better for health.

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

Straight veggie oil fuel (SVO) systems can be a tidy, efficient and affordable alternative. Unlike biodiesel, with SVO you have to customize the engine. The finest way is to fit an expert 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 circumstances you can use petro-diesel, biodiesel or SVO, in any mix. Just launch and go, stop and turn off, like any other car. 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 need to start the engine on common petroleum diesel or biodiesel in one tank and then 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 veggie oil systems in my blog site.

3. Biodiesel or SVO?

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

it's backed by many long-lasting tests in lots of nations, 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 experimental and require additional development.

On the other hand, biodiesel can be more expensive, 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 has actually to be processed first.

But the large and rapidly growing around the world band of homebrewers do not mind-- they make a supply each week 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, specifically WVO (waste veggie oil, used, cooked), which many individuals with SVO systems utilize due to the fact that it's cheap or free for the taking. With WVO food particles and pollutants and water must be eliminated, and it probably should be deacidified too. Biodieselers say, "If I'm going to have to do all that I might also make biodiesel rather." But SVO types scoff at that-- it's much less processing than making biodiesel, they state. To each his own.