Make your own Biodiesel Part 1

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

1. Use the oil simply as it is– generally 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 gas;

3. Convert it to biodiesel.

The very first two approaches sound most convenient, however, as so frequently in life, it’s not quite that basic.

1. Mixing it

Grease is much more viscous (thicker) than either petro-diesel or biodiesel. The function of mixing it or mixing it with other fuels is to lower the viscosity to make it so that it flows more easily through the fuel system into the combustion chamber.

If you’re blending veg-oil with petroleum diesel or kerosene (like # 1 diesel) you’re still using fossilfuel– cleaner than a lot of, but still unclean enough, lots of would say. Still, for every single gallon of

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

People utilize numerous blends, ranging from 10% vegetable oil and 90% petro-diesel to 90% grease and 10% petro-diesel. Some people just use it that method, launch and go, without pre-heating it (which makes veg-oil much thinner), or perhaps use 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 an extremely hard and tolerant motor– it won’t like it however you most likely will not eliminate it. Otherwise, it’s not sensible.

To do it properly 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 mixes.

Blends with numerous solvents and/or with unleaded gasoline are « speculative at finest », little or absolutely nothing is understood about their effects on the combustion qualities of the fuel or their long-term effects on the engine.

Higher viscosity is not the only issue with using vegetable oil as fuel. Veg-oil has different chemical properties and combustion qualities from the petroleum diesel fuel for which diesel engines and their fuel systems are designed.

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

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

Otherwise utilizing veg-oil fuel needs either a professional SVO option or biodiesel. Mixes and blends are normally a bad compromise. But blends do have a benefit in winter.

Similar to 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 season) More about fuel mixing and blends.