There are at least 3 ways to run a diesel engine on biofuel using veggie oils, animal fats or both. All three are utilized with both fresh and used oils.
1. Use the oil just as it is-- typically called SVO fuel (straight veggie oil);
2. Mix it with kerosene (paraffin) or petroleum diesel fuel, or with biodiesel, or blend it with a solvent, or with gas;
The very first two techniques sound easiest, however, as so typically in life, it's not rather that easy.
1. Mixing it
Grease is a lot more thick (thicker) than either petro-diesel or biodiesel. The function of blending it or mixing it with other fuels is to decrease 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 (same as # 1 diesel) you're still utilizing fossilfuel-- cleaner than a lot of, but still unclean enough, lots of would state. Still, for every single gallon of
veggie oil you use, that's one gallon of fossil-fuel conserved, which much less climate-changing carbon in the atmosphere.
People utilize various blends, ranging from 10% vegetable oil and 90% petro-diesel to 90% veggie oil and 10% petro-diesel. Some individuals simply use it that way, begin up and go, without pre-heating it (that makes veg-oil much thinner), or 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 hard and tolerant motor-- it will not like it however you most likely won't eliminate it. Otherwise, it's not sensible.
To do it correctly you'll require what amounts to an SVO system with fuel pre-heating anyway, preferably utilizing pure petro-diesel or biodiesel for starts and stops. (See next.) In which case there's no requirement for the blends.
Blends with different solvents and/or with unleaded gasoline are "experimental at finest", little or absolutely nothing is learnt 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 grease as fuel. Veg-oil has various chemical residential or commercial properties and combustion qualities from the petroleum diesel fuel for which diesel engines and their fuel systems are developed.
Diesel motor are state-of-the-art devices with really exact fuel requirements, especially the more modern, cleaner-burning diesels (see The TDI-SVO controversy).
They're difficult however they'll just take a lot abuse. There's no guarantee of it, however using a mix of up to 20% veg-oil of great quality is stated to be safe enough for older diesels, particularly in summer season.
Otherwise using veg-oil fuel requires either an expert SVO solution or biodiesel. Mixes and blends are generally a poor compromise. But blends do have an advantage in cold weather condition.
As with biodiesel, some kerosene or winterised petro-diesel fuel blended with straight grease reduces the temperature level at which it begins to gel. (See Using biodiesel in winter season) More about fuel mixing and blends.
