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

If you make it from used cooking oil it's not just cheap however you'll be recycling a bothersome waste item. Most importantly is the GREAT feeling of liberty, independence and empowerment it will give you. Here's how to do it-- everything you need to understand.

Straight veggie oil fuel (SVO) systems can be a clean, reliable and cost-effective alternative. Unlike biodiesel, with SVO you have to customize the engine. The very best way is to fit a professional singletank SVO system with replacement injectors and glowplugs optimised for veg-oil, in addition to fuel heating.

With the German Elsbett single-tank SVO system for example you can use petro-diesel, biodiesel or SVO, in any mix. Just launch and go, stop and turn off, like any other vehicle. 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 ordinary petroleum diesel or biodiesel in one tank and then switch to SVO in the other tank when the veg-oil is hot enough, and change back to petro- or biodiesel before you stop the engine, or you'll coke up the injectors.

More info on straight vegetable oil systems in my blog.

3. Biodiesel or SVO?

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

it's backed by numerous long-lasting tests in many countries, consisting of millions of miles on the roadway.

Biodiesel is a tidy, safe, ready-to-use, alternative fuel, whereas it's reasonable to state that lots of SVO systems are still speculative and need more advancement.

On the other hand, biodiesel can be more pricey, depending just how much you make, what you make it from and whether you're comparing it with brand-new oil or utilized oil (and depending on where you live). And unlike SVO, it needs to be processed initially.

But the large and rapidly growing worldwide band of homebrewers do not mind-- they make a supply weekly or once a month and quickly get utilized to it. Many have been doing it for years.

Anyway you have to process SVO too, particularly WVO (waste veggie oil, used, cooked), which lots of people with SVO systems use since it's inexpensive or free for the taking. With WVO food particles and impurities and water need to be removed, and it most likely needs to be deacidified too. Biodieselers say, "If I'm going to need to do all that I might as well make biodiesel rather." But SVO types scoff at that-- it's much less processing than making biodiesel, they say. To each his own.