Make your own Biodiesel Part 2
Anybody can make biodiesel. It's simple, 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 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 just low-cost but you'll be recycling a bothersome waste . Most importantly is the GREAT feeling of flexibility, independence and empowerment it will give you. Here's how to do it-- everything you need to understand.
Straight veggie oil fuel (SVO) systems can be a clean, reliable and economical alternative. 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, 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 change off, like any other car. 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 start the engine on normal petroleum diesel or biodiesel in one tank and then change 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 information on straight vegetable oil systems in my blog.
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 likewise has better cold-weather properties than SVO (but not as excellent as petro-diesel-- see Using biodiesel in winter). Unlike SVO,
it's backed by numerous long-term tests in many nations, consisting of millions of miles on the road.
Biodiesel is a clean, safe, ready-to-use, alternative fuel, whereas it's fair to state that lots of SVO systems are still speculative and need further development.
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 has to be processed first.
But the big and rapidly growing around the world band of homebrewers don't mind-- they make a supply weekly or when a month and soon get used to it. Many have actually been doing it for several years.
Anyway you have to process SVO too, specifically WVO (waste vegetable oil, utilized, prepared), which numerous people with SVO systems use since it's low-cost or totally free for the taking. With WVO food particles and pollutants and water should be removed, and it most likely needs to be deacidified too. Biodieselers state, "If I'm going to need to do all that I might as well make biodiesel instead." But SVO types discount that-- it's much less processing than making biodiesel, they say. To each his own.