There are at least three ways to run a diesel motor on biofuel utilizing veggie oils, animal fats or both. All three are utilized with both fresh and secondhand oils.

1. Use the oil just as it is-- normally 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 gasoline;

3. Convert it to biodiesel.

The very first 2 approaches sound most convenient, but, as so typically in life, it's not rather that easy.

1. Mixing it

Grease is a lot more viscous (thicker) than either petro-diesel or biodiesel. The purpose of blending it or mixing it with other fuels is to decrease the viscosity to make it thinner so that it streams more easily through the fuel system into the combustion chamber.

If you're mixing veg-oil with petroleum diesel or kerosene (same as # 1 diesel) you're still utilizing fossilfuel-- cleaner than a lot of, however still not clean enough, lots of would state. Still, for each gallon of

vegetable oil you utilize, that's one gallon of fossil-fuel saved, which much less climate-changing carbon in the atmosphere.

People use numerous blends, varying from 10% grease and 90% petro-diesel to 90% grease and 10% petro-diesel. Some people just use it that method, begin up and go, without pre-heating it (which makes veg-oil much thinner), and even utilize pure veggie oil without pre-heating it, which would make it much .

You may get away with it with an older Mercedes 5-cylinder IDI diesel, which is a really hard and tolerant motor-- it will not like it however you most likely won't kill it. Otherwise, it's not smart.

To do it appropriately 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 "speculative at best", little or absolutely nothing is learnt about their effects on the combustion qualities of the fuel or their long-lasting impacts on the engine.

Higher viscosity is not the only issue with utilizing grease as fuel. Veg-oil has different chemical residential or commercial properties and combustion characteristics from the petroleum diesel fuel for which diesel motor and their fuel systems are created.

Diesel motor are state-of-the-art devices with extremely accurate fuel requirements, specifically the more modern-day, cleaner-burning diesels (see The TDI-SVO debate).

They are difficult however they'll just take so much abuse. There's no guarantee of it, however utilizing a mix of approximately 20% veg-oil of great quality is said to be safe enough for older diesels, particularly in summer season.

Otherwise using veg-oil fuel requires either an expert SVO service or biodiesel. Mixes and blends are normally a poor compromise. But mixes do have an advantage in cold weather.

Just like biodiesel, some kerosene or winterised petro-diesel fuel blended with straight grease reduces the temperature level at which it starts to gel. (See Using biodiesel in winter) More about fuel blending and blends.