Make Your Own Biodiesel Part 1
There are at least 3 methods to run a diesel motor on biofuel utilizing veggie oils, or both. All three are used with both fresh and secondhand oils.
1. Use the oil just 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 gas;
3. Convert it to biodiesel.
The very first two methods sound easiest, however, as so often in life, it's not quite that easy.
1. Mixing it
Vegetable oil is a lot more thick (thicker) than either petro-diesel or biodiesel. The function of mixing it or blending 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 blending veg-oil with petroleum diesel or kerosene (like # 1 diesel) you're still utilizing fossilfuel-- cleaner than a lot of, but still unclean enough, numerous would state. Still, for each gallon of
veggie oil you use, that's one gallon of fossil-fuel conserved, and that much less climate-changing carbon in the environment.
People use numerous mixes, varying from 10% grease and 90% petro-diesel to 90% veggie oil and 10% petro-diesel. Some people just use it that way, begin up and go, without pre-heating it (which makes veg-oil much thinner), or 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 an extremely difficult and tolerant motor-- it will not like it but you most likely won't eliminate it. Otherwise, it's not smart.
To do it appropriately you'll require what amounts to an SVO system with fuel pre-heating anyhow, 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 fuel are "experimental at best", little or absolutely nothing is understood about their effects on the combustion attributes of the fuel or their long-term effects on the engine.
Higher viscosity is not the only issue with utilizing veggie oil as fuel. Veg-oil has various chemical residential or commercial properties and combustion attributes from the petroleum diesel fuel for which diesel motor and their fuel systems are designed.
Diesel engines are high-tech makers with very precise fuel requirements, specifically the more contemporary, cleaner-burning diesels (see The TDI-SVO debate).
They're difficult however they'll just take a lot abuse. There's no guarantee of it, however utilizing a blend of approximately 20% veg-oil of great quality is stated to be safe enough for older diesels, particularly in summer.
Otherwise utilizing veg-oil fuel requires either a professional SVO service or biodiesel. Mixes and blends are typically a poor compromise. But blends do have a benefit in winter.
Similar to biodiesel, some kerosene or winterised petro-diesel fuel blended with straight grease decreases the temperature at which it begins to gel. (See Using biodiesel in winter) More about fuel blending and blends.
