Make your own Biodiesel Part 1

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

1. Use the oil simply as it is– usually called SVO fuel (straight veggie oil);

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

3. Convert it to biodiesel.

The very first two approaches sound most convenient, however, as so often in life, it’s not rather that easy.

1. Mixing it

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

If you’re mixing veg-oil with petroleum diesel or kerosene (like # 1 diesel) you’re still utilizing fossilfuel– cleaner than a lot of, however still not tidy enough, lots of would state. Still, for each gallon of

veggie oil you use, that’s one gallon of fossil-fuel saved, which much less climate-changing carbon in the environment.

People use numerous blends, ranging from 10% veggie oil and 90% petro-diesel to 90% vegetable oil and 10% petro-diesel. Some people simply use it that method, start up and go, without pre-heating it (which makes veg-oil much thinner), or even use pure grease 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 a really hard and tolerant motor– it won’t like it but you probably will not eliminate it. Otherwise, it’s not wise.

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

Blends with various solvents and/or with unleaded gas are “speculative at best”, little or nothing is understood about their impacts on the combustion characteristics of the fuel or their long-lasting impacts on the engine.

Higher viscosity is not the only issue with utilizing grease as fuel. Veg-oil has different chemical homes and combustion attributes from the petroleum diesel fuel for which diesel motor and their fuel systems are developed.

Diesel engines are modern devices with very accurate fuel requirements, particularly the more modern, cleaner-burning diesels (see The TDI-SVO controversy).

They are difficult but they’ll just take so much abuse. There’s no assurance of it, but utilizing a blend of approximately 20% veg-oil of excellent quality is said to be safe enough for older diesels, specifically in summertime.

Otherwise utilizing veg-oil fuel needs either a professional SVO solution or biodiesel. Mixes and blends are typically a poor compromise. But blends do have an advantage in winter.

As with biodiesel, some kerosene or winterised petro-diesel fuel blended with straight veggie oil lowers the temperature at which it starts to gel. (See Using biodiesel in winter season) More about and blends.