Make your own Biodiesel Part 1
There are at least three to run a diesel motor on biofuel using vegetable oils, animal fats or both. All three are used with both fresh and pre-owned oils.
1. Use the oil just as it is-- generally called SVO fuel (straight grease);
2. Mix it with kerosene (paraffin) or petroleum diesel fuel, or with biodiesel, or blend it with a solvent, or with gasoline;
3. Convert it to biodiesel.
The very first two techniques sound simplest, however, as so frequently in life, it's not rather that easy.
1. Mixing it
Grease is far more viscous (thicker) than either petro-diesel or biodiesel. The function of blending it or mixing 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 mixing veg-oil with petroleum diesel or kerosene (exact same as # 1 diesel) you're still using fossilfuel-- cleaner than many, but still not tidy enough, lots of would say. Still, for every gallon of
vegetable oil you utilize, that's one gallon of fossil-fuel conserved, which much less climate-changing carbon in the environment.
People utilize different mixes, ranging from 10% grease 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 (that makes veg-oil much thinner), and even utilize 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 a very tough and tolerant motor-- it won't like it however you most likely won't eliminate it. Otherwise, it's not sensible.
To do it appropriately you'll require what totals up to an SVO system with fuel pre-heating anyway, preferably using pure petro-diesel or biodiesel for starts and stops. (See next.) In which case there's no need for the blends.
Blends with various solvents and/or with unleaded gas are "speculative at finest", little or absolutely nothing is understood about their effects on the combustion qualities of the fuel or their long-lasting results on the engine.
Higher viscosity is not the only problem with utilizing vegetable oil as fuel. Veg-oil has different chemical homes and combustion attributes from the petroleum diesel fuel for which diesel motor and their fuel systems are created.
Diesel engines are state-of-the-art machines with very precise fuel requirements, specifically the more modern, cleaner-burning diesels (see The TDI-SVO controversy).
They are difficult but they'll only take so much abuse. There's no warranty of it, however using a mix of up to 20% veg-oil of excellent quality is stated to be safe enough for older diesels, specifically in summertime.
Otherwise using veg-oil fuel requires either a professional SVO option or biodiesel. Mixes and blends are normally a bad compromise. But mixes do have an advantage in cold weather condition.
Just like biodiesel, some kerosene or winterised petro-diesel fuel blended with straight vegetable oil lowers the temperature at which it starts to gel. (See Using biodiesel in winter) More about fuel mixing and blends.