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

1. Use the oil simply 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 gas;

3. Convert it to biodiesel.

The very first 2 techniques sound simplest, however, as so often in life, it's not quite that easy.

1. Mixing it

Vegetable oil is far more thick (thicker) than either petro-diesel or biodiesel. The purpose 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 mixing veg-oil with petroleum diesel or kerosene (same as # 1 diesel) you're still using fossilfuel-- cleaner than the majority of, but still not clean enough, lots of would state. Still, for each gallon of

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

People utilize various mixes, varying from 10% veggie oil and 90% petro-diesel to 90% veggie oil and 10% petro-diesel. Some individuals just utilize it that method, start up and go, without pre-heating it (which makes veg-oil much thinner), or 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 really difficult and tolerant motor-- it won't like it but you probably will not eliminate it. Otherwise, it's not smart.

To do it appropriately you'll need what amounts to an SVO system with fuel pre-heating anyhow, preferably utilizing pure petro-diesel or biodiesel for starts and stops. (See next.) In which case there's no need for the blends.

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

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

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

They're hard however they'll only take so much abuse. There's no warranty of it, but utilizing a blend of approximately 20% veg-oil of excellent quality is said to be safe enough for older diesels, especially in summer season.

Otherwise utilizing veg-oil fuel needs either an expert SVO option or biodiesel. Mixes and blends are a bad compromise. But blends do have an advantage in cold weather condition.

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