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 three are utilized with both fresh and pre-owned oils.

1. Use the oil simply as it is– generally 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 methods sound simplest, however, as so often in life, it’s not quite that easy.

1. Mixing it

Grease is far 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 diesel or kerosene (exact same as # 1 diesel) you’re still using fossilfuel– cleaner than many, however still not tidy enough, many 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 environment.

People utilize numerous blends, ranging from 10% grease and 90% petro-diesel to 90% grease and 10% petro-diesel. Some people just use it that way, launch and go, without pre-heating it (that makes veg-oil much thinner), or perhaps use pure veggie oil without pre-heating it, which would make it much thinner.

You might 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 probably will not eliminate it. Otherwise, it’s not sensible.

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

Blends with various solvents and/or with unleaded gas are „speculative at best”, little or absolutely nothing is learnt 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 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 created.

Diesel motor are state-of-the-art devices with really exact fuel requirements, particularly the more modern-day, cleaner-burning diesels (see The TDI-SVO debate).

They’re hard but they’ll only take a lot abuse. There’s no assurance of it, however using a mix of approximately 20% veg-oil of excellent quality is stated to be safe enough for older diesels, particularly in summertime.

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

As with 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 mixing and blends.