There are at least 3 ways to run a diesel motor on biofuel using vegetable oils, animal fats or both. All three are used with both fresh and used 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 two techniques sound simplest, however, as so typically in life, it's not quite that easy.

1. Mixing it

Vegetable oil is a lot more viscous (thicker) than either petro-diesel or biodiesel. The purpose of blending 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 mixing veg-oil with petroleum diesel or kerosene (exact same as # 1 diesel) you're still using fossilfuel-- cleaner than most, but still unclean enough, numerous would say. Still, for each gallon of

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

People utilize numerous mixes, varying from 10% veggie oil and 90% petro-diesel to 90% vegetable oil and 10% petro-diesel. Some people just utilize it that way, begin up and go, without pre-heating it (that makes veg-oil much thinner), or 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 a very and tolerant motor-- it will not like it however you most likely will not eliminate it. Otherwise, it's not wise.

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

Blends with various solvents and/or with unleaded gas are "speculative at best", little or absolutely nothing is understood about their impacts on the combustion attributes of the fuel or their long-term impacts on the engine.

Higher viscosity is not the only problem with using vegetable oil as fuel. Veg-oil has different chemical homes and combustion attributes from the petroleum diesel fuel for which diesel engines and their fuel systems are created.

Diesel engines are modern devices with really accurate fuel requirements, specifically the more contemporary, cleaner-burning diesels (see The TDI-SVO controversy).

They are difficult however they'll only take a lot abuse. There's no guarantee of it, but using a mix of up to 20% veg-oil of excellent quality is stated to be safe enough for older diesels, particularly in summertime.

Otherwise utilizing veg-oil fuel needs either a professional SVO option or biodiesel. Mixes and blends are normally a bad compromise. But blends do have a benefit in winter.

Just like biodiesel, some kerosene or winterised petro-diesel fuel combined with straight vegetable oil decreases the temperature at which it starts to gel. (See Using biodiesel in winter season) More about fuel blending and blends.