Make your own Biodiesel Part 1

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

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

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 approaches sound easiest, but, as so frequently in life, it’s not quite that simple.

1. Mixing it

Vegetable oil is a lot more viscous (thicker) than either petro-diesel or biodiesel. The purpose of blending it or blending it with other fuels is to reduce the viscosity to make it thinner so that it streams 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 utilizing fossilfuel– cleaner than many, but still not tidy enough, numerous 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 use different mixes, ranging from 10% grease and 90% petro-diesel to 90% vegetable oil and 10% petro-diesel. Some people simply use it that way, launch and go, without pre-heating it (which 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 an extremely difficult and tolerant motor– it won’t like it however you probably won’t kill it. Otherwise, it’s not wise.

To do it properly you’ll need what amounts to an SVO system with fuel pre-heating anyway, ideally utilizing 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 best”, little or nothing is understood about their effects on the combustion attributes of the fuel or their long-term results on the engine.

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

Diesel engines are high-tech devices with really exact fuel requirements, specifically the more modern, cleaner-burning diesels (see The debate).

They’re hard but they’ll just take a lot abuse. There’s no assurance of it, however utilizing a mix of as much as 20% veg-oil of excellent quality is stated to be safe enough for older diesels, particularly in summer season.

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 cold weather.

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