Make your own Biodiesel Part 1
There are at least 3 ways to run a diesel motor on biofuel using veggie oils, animal fats or both. All 3 are utilized with both fresh and secondhand oils.
1. Use the oil just as it is– typically 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 first 2 methods sound simplest, however, as so in life, it’s not quite that easy.
1. Mixing it
Grease is much more thick (thicker) than either petro-diesel or biodiesel. The function of mixing it or blending it with other fuels is to reduce 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 most, but still not clean enough, numerous would state. Still, for every gallon of
veggie oil you use, that’s one gallon of fossil-fuel saved, and that much less climate-changing carbon in the atmosphere.
People use various mixes, varying from 10% veggie oil and 90% petro-diesel to 90% grease and 10% petro-diesel. Some people simply use it that way, start up and go, without pre-heating it (which makes veg-oil much thinner), or perhaps use pure veggie oil 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, ideally 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 best”, little or nothing is known about their impacts on the combustion characteristics of the fuel or their long-term impacts on the engine.
Higher viscosity is not the only problem with using vegetable oil as fuel. Veg-oil has various chemical residential or commercial properties and combustion characteristics from the petroleum diesel fuel for which diesel motor and their fuel systems are designed.
Diesel motor are high-tech machines with extremely accurate 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 guarantee of it, but 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.
Otherwise utilizing veg-oil fuel requires either an expert SVO service or biodiesel. Mixes and blends are typically a poor compromise. But blends do have a benefit in winter.
As with biodiesel, some kerosene or winterised petro-diesel fuel combined with straight vegetable oil lowers the temperature at which it begins to gel. (See Using biodiesel in winter season) More about fuel mixing and blends.
