Make Your Own Biodiesel Part 1

There are at least three ways to run a diesel engine on biofuel using vegetable oils, animal fats or both. All three are used with both fresh and secondhand oils.


1. Use the oil simply 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 easiest, however, as so in life, it's not quite that simple.


1. Mixing it


Grease is a lot more thick (thicker) than either petro-diesel or biodiesel. The purpose of blending it or blending 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 mixing veg-oil with petroleum diesel or kerosene (like # 1 diesel) you're still utilizing fossilfuel-- cleaner than most, 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 atmosphere.


People utilize different blends, ranging from 10% vegetable oil and 90% petro-diesel to 90% grease and 10% petro-diesel. Some people just utilize it that method, launch and go, without pre-heating it (that makes veg-oil much thinner), or perhaps utilize pure veggie oil 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 hard and tolerant motor-- it won't like it but you probably will not kill it. Otherwise, it's not smart.


To do it appropriately you'll require what totals up to an SVO system with fuel pre-heating anyhow, ideally using pure petro-diesel or biodiesel for starts and stops. (See next.) In which case there's no need for the mixes.


Blends with numerous solvents and/or with unleaded gas are "speculative at finest", little or absolutely nothing is learnt about their impacts on the combustion qualities of the fuel or their long-term results on the engine.


Higher viscosity is not the only problem with utilizing grease as fuel. Veg-oil has various chemical homes and combustion characteristics from the petroleum diesel fuel for which diesel engines and their fuel systems are created.


Diesel engines are high-tech devices with really accurate fuel requirements, especially the more contemporary, cleaner-burning diesels (see The TDI-SVO debate).


They are difficult but they'll only take a lot abuse. There's no assurance of it, but utilizing a mix of as much as 20% veg-oil of excellent quality is said to be safe enough for older diesels, particularly in summertime.


Otherwise utilizing veg-oil fuel needs either an expert SVO option or biodiesel. Mixes and blends are typically a bad compromise. But blends do have a benefit in cold weather.


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