Anybody can make biodiesel. It's easy, you can make it in your kitchen-- and it's BETTER than the petro-diesel fuel the huge oil business offer you. Your diesel motor will run much better and last longer on your home-made fuel, and it's much cleaner-- better for the environment and better for health.

If you make it from used cooking oil it's not just inexpensive but you'll be recycling a frustrating waste product. 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 understand.

Straight grease fuel (SVO) systems can be a clean, efficient and economical choice. 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, along with fuel heating.

With the German Elsbett single-tank SVO system for example you can use petro-diesel, biodiesel or SVO, in any combination. Just launch and go, stop and switch off, like any other car. Journey to Forever's Toyota TownAce van uses 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 after that 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 details on straight veggie oil systems in my blog.

3. Biodiesel or SVO?

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

it's backed by many long-term tests in many countries, including countless miles on the roadway.

Biodiesel is a clean, safe, ready-to-use, alternative fuel, whereas it's fair to say that lots of SVO systems are still experimental and need additional 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 new oil or used oil (and depending on where you live). And unlike SVO, it has actually to be processed initially.

But the big and rapidly growing around the world band of homebrewers do not mind-- they make a supply each week or as soon as a month and soon get utilized to it. Many have been doing it for years.

Anyway you need to process SVO too, especially WVO (waste grease, used, cooked), which many individuals with SVO systems use due to the fact that it's inexpensive or free for the taking. With WVO food particles and impurities and water need to be gotten rid of, and it probably needs to be deacidified too. Biodieselers say, "If I'm going to need to do all that I might as well make biodiesel instead." But SVO types scoff at that-- it's much less processing than making biodiesel, they state. To each his own.