Make your own Biodiesel Part 1

There are at least three methods to run a diesel engine on biofuel utilizing vegetable oils, animal fats or both. All 3 are utilized with both fresh and used oils.

1. Use the oil simply as it is– normally 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 gasoline;

3. Convert it to biodiesel.

The very first 2 methods sound most convenient, however, as so typically in life, it’s not quite that simple.

1. Mixing it

Vegetable oil is a lot more thick (thicker) than either petro-diesel or biodiesel. The function of blending it or mixing it with other fuels is to decrease the viscosity to make it thinner so that it flows more easily 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 using fossilfuel– cleaner than most, but still unclean enough, many would state. Still, for each 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% vegetable 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), and 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 difficult and tolerant motor– it won’t like it however you probably will not kill it. Otherwise, it’s not wise.

To do it effectively you’ll require what totals up 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 mixes.

Blends with different solvents and/or with unleaded gas are “speculative at finest”, little or absolutely nothing is understood about their effects on the combustion characteristics of the fuel or their long-term impacts on the engine.

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

are modern machines with extremely accurate fuel requirements, particularly the more modern-day, cleaner-burning diesels (see The TDI-SVO debate).

They are difficult but they’ll just take so much abuse. There’s no warranty of it, but using a mix of as much as 20% veg-oil of good quality is stated to be safe enough for older diesels, especially in summertime.

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

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