Make Your Own Biodiesel Part 1

There are at least three ways to run a diesel motor on biofuel utilizing veggie oils, animal fats or both. All 3 are utilized 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 blend it with a solvent, or with fuel;


3. Convert it to biodiesel.


The very first two methods sound most convenient, however, as so typically in life, it's not quite that basic.


1. Mixing it


Vegetable oil is much more thick (thicker) than either petro-diesel or biodiesel. The purpose of mixing it or mixing it with other fuels is to reduce the viscosity to make it thinner so that it flows more freely through the fuel system into the combustion chamber.


If you're mixing veg-oil with petroleum diesel or kerosene (exact same as # 1 diesel) you're still using fossilfuel-- cleaner than many, however still unclean enough, lots of would state. Still, for each gallon of


grease you use, that's one gallon of fossil-fuel saved, which much less climate-changing carbon in the atmosphere.


People use various mixes, varying from 10% vegetable oil and 90% petro-diesel to 90% veggie oil and 10% petro-diesel. Some people simply utilize it that way, start up and go, without pre-heating it (that makes veg-oil much thinner), and even utilize pure grease without pre-heating it, which would make it much thinner.


You may get away with it with an older Mercedes 5-cylinder IDI diesel, which is an extremely difficult and tolerant motor-- it won't like it but you most likely will not eliminate it. Otherwise, it's not sensible.


To do it correctly you'll need what amounts to an SVO system with fuel pre-heating anyhow, preferably utilizing 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 fuel are "experimental at finest", little or absolutely nothing is known about their impacts on the combustion attributes of the fuel or their long-term results on the engine.


Higher viscosity is not the only issue with using veggie oil as fuel. Veg-oil has different chemical properties and combustion attributes from the petroleum diesel fuel for which diesel motor and their fuel systems are developed.


Diesel engines are with very exact fuel requirements, specifically the more modern-day, cleaner-burning diesels (see The TDI-SVO debate).


They're hard however they'll only take a lot abuse. There's no assurance of it, however using a blend of approximately 20% veg-oil of good quality is stated to be safe enough for older diesels, specifically in summer.


Otherwise using veg-oil fuel needs either a professional SVO service or biodiesel. Mixes and blends are normally a bad compromise. But mixes do have a benefit in winter.


Just like biodiesel, some kerosene or winterised petro-diesel fuel blended with straight grease decreases the temperature at which it begins to gel. (See Using biodiesel in winter) More about fuel blending and blends.