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

1. Use the oil just as it is-- generally 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 methods sound most convenient, however, as so frequently in life, it's not rather that simple.

1. Mixing it

Vegetable oil is much more viscous (thicker) than either petro-diesel or biodiesel. The function of mixing it or mixing it with other fuels is to lower 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 the majority of, but still unclean enough, many would say. Still, for each gallon of

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

People use different blends, ranging from 10% veggie oil and 90% petro-diesel to 90% grease and 10% petro-diesel. Some individuals simply utilize it that method, start up and go, without pre-heating it (which makes veg-oil much thinner), and even utilize pure grease 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 hard and tolerant motor-- it will not like it however you most likely won't eliminate it. Otherwise, it's not smart.

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

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 attributes of the fuel or their long-term results on the engine.

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

Diesel motor are high-tech devices with very precise fuel requirements, particularly the more contemporary, cleaner-burning diesels (see The TDI-SVO debate).

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

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

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