Make your own Biodiesel Part 1
There are at least 3 ways to run a diesel motor on biofuel using vegetable oils, animal fats or both. All 3 are used with both fresh and pre-owned oils.
1. Use the oil just as it is-- normally called SVO fuel (straight grease);
2. Mix it with kerosene (paraffin) or petroleum diesel fuel, or with biodiesel, or mix it with a solvent, or with gasoline;
3. Convert it to biodiesel.
The first 2 techniques sound most convenient, however, as so frequently in life, it's not rather that easy.
1. Mixing it
Vegetable oil is a lot more thick (thicker) than either petro-diesel or biodiesel. The function of mixing it or mixing it with other fuels is to reduce the viscosity to make it thinner so that it streams more easily through the fuel system into the combustion chamber.
If you're blending veg-oil with petroleum diesel or kerosene (like # 1 diesel) you're still using fossilfuel-- cleaner than many, however still unclean enough, lots of would say. Still, for every single gallon of
grease you use, that's one gallon of fossil-fuel conserved, which much less climate-changing carbon in the environment.
People utilize numerous blends, varying from 10% veggie oil and 90% petro-diesel to 90% grease and 10% petro-diesel. Some people simply use it that method, launch and go, without pre-heating it (that makes veg-oil much thinner), and even use pure grease without pre-heating it, which would make it much thinner.
You might get away with it with an older Mercedes 5-cylinder IDI diesel, which is a very tough and tolerant motor-- it will not like it but you probably will not kill it. Otherwise, it's not sensible.
To do it correctly you'll require what totals up to an SVO system with fuel pre-heating anyway, preferably using pure petro-diesel or biodiesel for starts and stops. (See next.) In which case there's no requirement for the blends.
Blends with different solvents and/or with unleaded gas are "experimental at best", little or absolutely nothing is learnt about their effects on the combustion qualities of the fuel or their results on the engine.
Higher viscosity is not the only problem with utilizing veggie oil as fuel. Veg-oil has different chemical residential or commercial properties and combustion attributes from the petroleum diesel fuel for which diesel engines and their fuel systems are developed.
Diesel motor are modern devices with very accurate fuel requirements, specifically the more contemporary, cleaner-burning diesels (see The TDI-SVO debate).
They are difficult but they'll only take so much abuse. There's no warranty of it, but using a blend of as much as 20% veg-oil of great quality is said to be safe enough for older diesels, especially in summer season.
Otherwise utilizing veg-oil fuel requires either a professional SVO service or biodiesel. Mixes and blends are usually a poor compromise. But blends do have an advantage in winter.
Similar to biodiesel, some kerosene or winterised petro-diesel fuel mixed with straight grease lowers the temperature at which it begins to gel. (See Using biodiesel in winter season) More about fuel mixing and blends.