Make your own Biodiesel Part 1

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

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

3. Convert it to biodiesel.

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

1. Mixing it

Grease 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 streams more freely through the fuel system into the combustion chamber.

If you’re mixing veg-oil with petroleum diesel or kerosene (exact same as # 1 diesel) you’re still utilizing fossilfuel– cleaner than most, but still not clean enough, lots of would say. Still, for every single gallon of

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

People use different blends, varying from 10% veggie oil and 90% petro-diesel to 90% grease and 10% petro-diesel. Some utilize it that way, launch and go, without pre-heating it (that makes veg-oil much thinner), and even utilize 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 a very tough and tolerant motor– it will not like it however you most likely will not kill it. Otherwise, it’s not smart.

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 requirement for the blends.

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

Higher viscosity is not the only issue with using veggie oil as fuel. Veg-oil has various chemical properties and combustion qualities from the petroleum diesel fuel for which diesel motor and their fuel systems are developed.

Diesel engines are modern makers with very precise fuel requirements, particularly the more contemporary, cleaner-burning diesels (see The TDI-SVO debate).

They are difficult however they’ll just take a lot abuse. There’s no assurance of it, but utilizing a blend of as much as 20% veg-oil of good quality is said to be safe enough for older diesels, especially in summer season.

Otherwise utilizing veg-oil fuel needs either an expert SVO option or biodiesel. Mixes and blends are normally a poor compromise. But blends do have a benefit in cold weather condition.

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