Anybody can make biodiesel. It's easy, you can make it in your cooking area-- and it's BETTER than the petro-diesel fuel the big oil companies sell you. Your diesel motor will run better and last longer on your home-made fuel, and it's much cleaner-- better for the environment and much better for health.

If you make it from used cooking oil it's not just inexpensive but you'll be recycling a troublesome waste product. Best of all is the GREAT sensation of flexibility, self-reliance and empowerment it will provide you. Here's how to do it-- everything you need to understand.

Straight vegetable oil fuel (SVO) systems can be a clean, effective and economical alternative. Unlike biodiesel, with SVO you have to customize the engine. The very best way is to fit a professional singletank SVO system with replacement injectors and glowplugs optimised for veg-oil, in addition to fuel heating.

With the German Elsbett single-tank SVO system for example you can use petro-diesel, biodiesel or SVO, in any combination. Just begin up and go, stop and switch off, like any other car. Journey to Forever's Toyota TownAce van uses an Elsbett single-tank system. More

There are also two-tank SVO systems which pre-heat the oil to make it thinner. You need to start the engine on regular petroleum diesel or biodiesel in one tank and after that change to SVO in the other tank when the is hot enough, and change back to petro- or biodiesel before you stop the engine, or you'll coke up the injectors.

More details on straight vegetable oil systems in my blog.

3. Biodiesel or SVO?

Biodiesel has some clear benefits over SVO: it works in any diesel, without any conversion or adjustments to the engine or the fuel system-- simply put it in and go. It also has much better cold-weather properties than SVO (but not as great as petro-diesel-- see Using biodiesel in winter). Unlike SVO,

it's backed by numerous long-term tests in many nations, including countless miles on the roadway.

Biodiesel is a clean, safe, ready-to-use, alternative fuel, whereas it's fair to state that lots of SVO systems are still speculative and need further development.

On the other hand, biodiesel can be more pricey, depending how much you make, what you make it from and whether you're comparing it with brand-new oil or used oil (and depending upon where you live). And unlike SVO, it needs to be processed initially.

But the big and quickly growing worldwide band of homebrewers do not mind-- they make a supply weekly or when a month and soon get utilized to it. Many have actually been doing it for years.

Anyway you need to process SVO too, particularly WVO (waste grease, used, prepared), which numerous people with SVO systems use since it's cheap or totally free for the taking. With WVO food particles and impurities and water must be removed, and it most likely should be deacidified too. Biodieselers say, "If I'm going to need to do all that I might as well make biodiesel rather." But SVO types belittle that-- it's much less processing than making biodiesel, they say. To each his own.