There are at least three ways to run a diesel motor on biofuel using vegetable oils, animal fats or both. All 3 are utilized with both fresh and secondhand oils.

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

3. Convert it to biodiesel.

The first 2 techniques sound most convenient, however, as so frequently in life, it's not quite that simple.

1. Mixing it

Vegetable oil is a lot more thick (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 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 using fossilfuel-- cleaner than a lot of, however still unclean enough, numerous would say. Still, for every single gallon of

veggie oil you utilize, that's one gallon of fossil-fuel conserved, which much less climate-changing carbon in the environment.

People utilize various blends, ranging from 10% grease and 90% petro-diesel to 90% vegetable oil and 10% petro-diesel. Some people just utilize it that way, launch and go, without pre-heating it (which makes veg-oil much thinner), and even use 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 hard and tolerant motor-- it won't like it however you most likely will not kill it. Otherwise, it's not smart.

To do it effectively 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 blends.

Blends with numerous solvents and/or with unleaded fuel are "speculative at finest", little or nothing is known about their results on the combustion qualities of the fuel or their long-term impacts on the engine.

Higher viscosity is not the only issue with using vegetable oil as fuel. Veg-oil has various chemical homes and combustion qualities from the petroleum diesel fuel for which diesel motor and their fuel systems are designed.

Diesel engines are modern machines with really exact fuel requirements, particularly the more modern, cleaner-burning diesels (see The TDI-SVO debate).

They are difficult but they'll only take a lot abuse. There's no warranty of it, however utilizing a mix of approximately 20% veg-oil of great quality is said to be safe enough for older diesels, specifically in summer season.

Otherwise utilizing veg-oil fuel requires either a professional SVO option or biodiesel. Mixes and blends are typically a poor compromise. But blends do have an advantage in cold weather.

As with biodiesel, some kerosene or winterised petro-diesel fuel combined with straight grease lowers the temperature at which it begins to gel. (See Using biodiesel in winter) More about fuel mixing and blends.