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

1. Use the oil simply as it is-- typically 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 first two techniques sound simplest, but, as so frequently in life, it's not quite that easy.

1. Mixing it

Grease is far more thick (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 freely through the fuel system into the combustion chamber.

If you're blending veg-oil with petroleum diesel or kerosene (very same as # 1 diesel) you're still using fossilfuel-- cleaner than many, but still not tidy enough, numerous would state. Still, for every gallon of

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

People use numerous mixes, varying from 10% veggie oil and 90% petro-diesel to 90% grease and 10% petro-diesel. Some people simply use it that method, begin up and go, without pre-heating it (that 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 an extremely hard and tolerant motor-- it won't like it but you probably won't eliminate it. Otherwise, it's not smart.

To do it properly you'll need what amounts to an SVO system with fuel pre-heating anyhow, ideally 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 fuel are "experimental at best", little or absolutely nothing is understood about their impacts on the combustion qualities of the fuel or their long-term impacts on the engine.

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

Diesel motor are modern makers with very precise fuel requirements, specifically the more contemporary, cleaner-burning diesels (see The TDI-SVO controversy).

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

Otherwise utilizing veg-oil fuel needs either a professional SVO solution or biodiesel. Mixes and blends are generally a bad compromise. But mixes do have a benefit in cold weather condition.

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