Make Your Own Biodiesel Part 1

There are at least 3 ways to run a diesel motor on biofuel using veggie oils, animal fats or both. All 3 are used with both fresh and pre-owned oils.


1. Use the oil just as it is-- generally called SVO fuel (straight vegetable oil);


2. Mix it with kerosene (paraffin) or petroleum diesel fuel, or with biodiesel, or mix it with a solvent, or with gas;


3. Convert it to biodiesel.


The very first 2 approaches sound easiest, however, as so often in life, it's not quite that basic.


1. Mixing it


Vegetable oil is far more thick (thicker) than either petro-diesel or biodiesel. The function of mixing it or blending it with other fuels is to decrease 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 (very same as # 1 diesel) you're still using fossilfuel-- cleaner than many, but still not clean enough, numerous would state. Still, for every gallon of


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


People utilize various blends, varying from 10% vegetable oil and 90% petro-diesel to 90% grease and 10% petro-diesel. Some people just utilize it that way, begin up and go, without pre-heating it (which makes veg-oil much thinner), or perhaps 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 a very tough and tolerant motor-- it won't like it but you most likely will not eliminate it. Otherwise, it's not sensible.


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


Blends with numerous solvents and/or with unleaded gas are "speculative at best", little or nothing is understood about their effects on the combustion attributes of the fuel or their on the engine.


Higher viscosity is not the only problem with using grease as fuel. Veg-oil has different chemical residential or commercial properties and combustion characteristics from the petroleum diesel fuel for which diesel motor and their fuel systems are developed.


Diesel motor are state-of-the-art makers with really accurate fuel requirements, specifically the more modern, cleaner-burning diesels (see The TDI-SVO debate).


They are difficult but they'll just take a lot abuse. There's no assurance of it, but using a blend of up to 20% veg-oil of great quality is said to be safe enough for older diesels, particularly in summertime.


Otherwise using veg-oil fuel needs either an expert SVO service or biodiesel. Mixes and blends are normally a bad compromise. But mixes do have an advantage in cold weather.


Similar to biodiesel, some kerosene or winterised petro-diesel fuel mixed with straight grease lowers the temperature level at which it starts to gel. (See Using biodiesel in winter) More about fuel mixing and blends.