Make your own Biodiesel Part 1
There are at least 3 methods to run a diesel engine on biofuel using vegetable oils, animal fats or both. All 3 are utilized with both fresh and pre-owned 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 gasoline;
3. Convert it to biodiesel.
The very first 2 methods sound most convenient, but, as so frequently in life, it's not rather that simple.
1. Mixing it
Grease is far more viscous (thicker) than either petro-diesel or biodiesel. The function of mixing it or blending it with other fuels is to lower the viscosity to make it thinner so that it flows more freely through the fuel system into the combustion chamber.
If you're blending veg-oil with petroleum diesel or kerosene (exact same as # 1 diesel) you're still using fossilfuel-- cleaner than most, but still unclean enough, many would state. Still, for each gallon of
veggie oil you utilize, that's one gallon of fossil-fuel conserved, which much less climate-changing carbon in the atmosphere.
People utilize numerous mixes, ranging from 10% vegetable oil and 90% petro-diesel to 90% grease and 10% petro-diesel. Some people simply utilize it that method, start up and go, without pre-heating it (which makes veg-oil much thinner), and even utilize pure vegetable 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 tough and tolerant motor-- it won't like it however you most likely will not kill it. Otherwise, it's not smart.
To do it properly you'll require what totals up to an SVO system with fuel pre-heating anyway, preferably 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 gas are "experimental at finest", little or nothing is known about their impacts on the combustion qualities of the fuel or their long-term results on the engine.
Higher viscosity is not the only problem with utilizing veggie oil as fuel. Veg-oil has various chemical homes and combustion characteristics from the petroleum diesel fuel for which diesel engines and their fuel systems are created.
Diesel motor are state-of-the-art devices with extremely exact fuel requirements, especially the more modern-day, cleaner-burning diesels (see The TDI-SVO debate).
They're tough but they'll just take a lot abuse. There's no assurance of it, however utilizing a blend of approximately 20% veg-oil of excellent quality is said to be safe enough for older diesels, especially in summertime.
Otherwise using veg-oil fuel requires either an expert SVO solution or . Mixes and blends are generally a bad compromise. But mixes do have a benefit in winter.
Similar to biodiesel, some kerosene or winterised petro-diesel fuel mixed with straight veggie oil reduces the temperature level at which it starts to gel. (See Using biodiesel in winter) More about fuel mixing and blends.