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 big oil companies offer you. Your diesel motor will run better and last longer on your home-made fuel, and it's much much better for the environment and much better for health.

If you make it from utilized cooking oil it's not only cheap but you'll be recycling a problematic waste item. Best of all is the GREAT sensation of liberty, independence and empowerment it will give you. Here's how to do it-- everything you need to know.

Straight grease fuel (SVO) systems can be a clean, reliable and cost-effective alternative. Unlike biodiesel, with SVO you have to customize the engine. The best way 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 utilize petro-diesel, biodiesel or SVO, in any mix. Just launch and go, stop and turn off, like any other automobile. Journey to Forever's Toyota TownAce van utilizes 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 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 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. Biodiesel or SVO?

Biodiesel has some clear benefits over SVO: it operates in any diesel, without any conversion or adjustments to the engine or the fuel system-- just put it in and go. It likewise has better cold-weather properties than SVO (however not as good as petro-diesel-- see Using biodiesel in winter). Unlike SVO,

it's backed by numerous long-term tests in lots of countries, consisting of millions of miles on the road.

Biodiesel is a clean, safe, ready-to-use, alternative fuel, whereas it's reasonable to say that lots of SVO systems are still experimental and require more 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 brand-new oil or used oil (and depending upon where you live). And unlike SVO, it has actually to be processed first.

But the large and quickly growing around the world band of homebrewers do not mind-- they make a supply each week or when 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 vegetable oil, used, prepared), which many individuals with SVO systems use since it's inexpensive or complimentary for the taking. With WVO food particles and pollutants and water should be eliminated, and it probably should be deacidified too. Biodieselers say, "If I'm going to need to do all that I may as well make biodiesel instead." But SVO types belittle that-- it's much less processing than making biodiesel, they say. To each his own.