Make your own Biodiesel Part 1

There are at least three methods to run a diesel motor on biofuel utilizing veggie oils, animal fats or both. All three are used with both fresh and pre-owned 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 gas;

3. Convert it to biodiesel.

The first two techniques sound easiest, however, as so often in life, it’s not quite that basic.

1. Mixing it

Vegetable oil is a lot more thick (thicker) than either petro-diesel or biodiesel. The purpose of blending it or mixing it with other fuels is to decrease the viscosity to make it thinner so that it streams more easily through the fuel system into the combustion chamber.

If you’re blending with petroleum diesel or kerosene (same as # 1 diesel) you’re still using fossilfuel– cleaner than most, however still unclean enough, numerous would say. Still, for each gallon of

veggie oil you use, that’s one gallon of fossil-fuel conserved, and that much less climate-changing carbon in the atmosphere.

People utilize various blends, varying from 10% veggie 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 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 a very hard and tolerant motor– it won’t like it however you most likely won’t eliminate it. Otherwise, it’s not smart.

To do it appropriately you’ll require what totals up to an SVO system with fuel pre-heating anyway, 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 gas are “experimental at finest”, little or nothing is understood about their effects on the combustion characteristics of the fuel or their long-term effects on the engine.

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

Diesel motor are modern makers with very accurate fuel requirements, especially the more modern-day, cleaner-burning diesels (see The TDI-SVO debate).

They’re difficult however they’ll just take a lot abuse. There’s no warranty of it, however using a mix of up to 20% veg-oil of good quality is stated to be safe enough for older diesels, specifically in summer season.

Otherwise utilizing veg-oil fuel requires either a professional SVO option or biodiesel. Mixes and blends are typically a poor compromise. But mixes do have a benefit in winter.

Just like biodiesel, some kerosene or winterised petro-diesel fuel blended with straight vegetable oil reduces the temperature level at which it begins to gel. (See Using biodiesel in winter season) More about fuel mixing and blends.