Make Your Own Biodiesel Part 1
There are at least three ways to run a diesel motor on biofuel using veggie 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 mix it with a solvent, or with gas;
3. Convert it to biodiesel.
The first 2 techniques sound easiest, however, as so often in life, it's not rather that basic.
1. Mixing it
Grease is a lot more viscous (thicker) than either petro-diesel or biodiesel. The purpose of mixing it or mixing it with other fuels is to reduce 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 (like # 1 diesel) you're still utilizing fossilfuel-- cleaner than a lot of, however still unclean enough, numerous would state. Still, for each gallon of
grease you use, that's one gallon of fossil-fuel saved, and that much less climate-changing carbon in the environment.
People use different mixes, ranging from 10% vegetable oil and 90% petro-diesel to 90% vegetable oil and 10% petro-diesel. Some individuals simply use it that method, start up and go, without pre-heating it (that makes much thinner), or even use 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 but you most likely will not eliminate 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 utilizing pure petro-diesel or biodiesel for starts and stops. (See next.) In which case there's no requirement for the mixes.
Blends with various solvents and/or with unleaded gasoline are "experimental at best", little or absolutely 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 different chemical residential or commercial properties and combustion qualities from the petroleum diesel fuel for which diesel motor and their fuel systems are developed.
Diesel engines are state-of-the-art machines with very accurate fuel requirements, specifically the more contemporary, cleaner-burning diesels (see The TDI-SVO debate).
They're difficult but they'll only take so much abuse. There's no warranty of it, but using a mix of up to 20% veg-oil of excellent quality is said to be safe enough for older diesels, especially in summertime.
Otherwise utilizing veg-oil fuel requires either an expert SVO service or biodiesel. Mixes and blends are typically a poor compromise. But mixes do have a benefit in cold weather condition.
Just like 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 season) More about fuel mixing and blends.
