How to Make Biodiesel.

Making Biodiesel at Home is easy and anybody that wants to can make it in their home or garage and expierience freedom when filling up their car with Homemade Biodiesel. Not only will they expierience freedom but they will also be doing their part in conserving the environment. The Advantages of Biodiesel is endless and much beter than the conventional petrodiesel that everybody got used to.

Some people use Straight Vegetable Oil in their vehicles with no modifications made to the engine, others blend vegetable oil with petrodiesel and still others make some modifications, like pre heaters or adding mothballs and paint stripper to the vegetable oil. This is the easy road and we do not recommend it at all. If you want good results and want to prolong the life of your engine you have to make a high quality biodiesel.

The procedure of making Biodiesel is called transesterification. Biodiesel is made from Triglycerides (an ester formed from glycerol and three fatty acid groups, the main constituents of natural fats and oils). The biodiesel manufacturing process replaces the glycerine with methanol, in a chemical reaction using lye as a catalyst. This then forms a Fatty acid methyl ester (FAME), which is the technical name for Biodiesel. The glycerine settles on the bottom and the Biodiesel floats on top and can be siphoned off to be washed and dried.

This is a very difficult way to explain a easy process. You don't have to be a Scientist to make Biodiesel. All over the world everybody from Accountants to Welders are making biodiesel.

Making high quality Biodiesel can be broken down in a few easy steps:

1. Safety. This is always the first step. Remember you are working with chemicals here. Potassium Hydroxide (KOH) or Sodium Hydroxide (Caustic soda, NaOH) can be used as a catalyst both of which are common household items. Common sense should prevail and the safety instructions on the products must be adhered to.
2. Choosing and Preparing your Feedstock. When making biodiesel for the first time it is a good idea to make a small test batch with new vegetable oil first to familiarize yourself with the process. You can use a wide variety of feedstock from rapeseed oil to waste vegetable oil (WVO) and tallow. WVO is a good choice because it is not that difficult to come by and it is something that usually ends up in the drain or at the landfill that can be recycled. To prepare your feedstock you need to filter it and heat it to get rid off any water, if necesary.
3. Titration. To determine how much catalyst is needed you need to preform a tritration on the oil being used to make the Biodiesel. This is the most difficult step in the whole process and also the most critical, if you want to make high quality Biodiesel.
4. Preparing the Sodium Methoxide. Care should be taken when mixing the chemicals.
5. Mixing. While stirring add the prepared sodium methoxide to the heated oil.
6. Settling. Allow the mixture to settle and then drain the glycerine.
7. Washing & Drying. To get High Quality Biodiesel it is essential to Wash it. There is a few methods that you can use to wash your Biodiesel.
8. Quality Test. The quality of your finished product is can be tested by checking the PH or a simple visual inspection.

To see all these steps in detail go to the Recipe to Make Biodiesel.

Or if you don't want to make your own biodiesel go to Biodiesel suppliers and producers.