There are at least three methods to run a diesel motor on biofuel utilizing veggie oils, animal fats or both. All three are used with both fresh and pre-owned 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 blend it with a solvent, or with fuel;

3. Convert it to biodiesel.

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

1. Mixing it

Grease is much 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 streams 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 not clean enough, numerous would say. Still, for each gallon of

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

People use numerous mixes, varying from 10% vegetable oil and 90% petro-diesel to 90% grease and 10% petro-diesel. Some people just utilize it that way, start 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 may get away with it with an older Mercedes 5-cylinder IDI diesel, which is an extremely difficult and tolerant motor-- it won't like it however you probably won't eliminate it. Otherwise, it's not smart.

To do it effectively 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 mixes.

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

Higher viscosity is not the only problem with utilizing vegetable oil 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 created.

Diesel motor are high-tech devices with extremely precise fuel requirements, specifically the more modern-day, cleaner-burning diesels (see The TDI-SVO controversy).

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

Otherwise using veg-oil fuel requires either a professional SVO solution or biodiesel. Mixes and blends are typically a bad compromise. But mixes do have an advantage in cold weather condition.

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