Make Your Own Biodiesel – An Introduction

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Anyone who thinks they might want to produce their own biodiesel should try one of these processes first.  The videos below are all based on a do it yourself in the kitchen or garage premise.  They run the gamut from “Just show me the bare basics, I don’t want to know the science stuff” to “Here’s the whole process with all the chemicals (and they’re aren’t many) explained.”  At the end there is also a link to a great article from Backwoods Home with all the steps and lots of details.

This article concentrates on making biodiesel from used cooking oil.   Sure,  you could start with clean vegetable oil, but why would you?  It’s so expensive to start with, you would barely be beating retail price at the pumps for regular diesel.

Yes, you can get almost unlimited used oil locally – if you live in a large enough town.  Don’t take it, ask for it.  Did you know that most restaurants have to pay up to a couple hundred dollars a month to have their used grease hauled off?  The trick to finding a good source is to be polite about the whole thing and show up on a regular basis.  The first time you leave the restaurant owner stranded with an overflowing barrels of yucky oil will be the last time you – or anyone else – will get a free source from them.

Here’s a quick video from one of my favorite guys – Kip Kay – when he still worked for Make Magazine.

This is a link to an end to end descriptive article from Backwoods Home Magazine.

Here’s a great video if you don’t want to know too much and don’t want to spend more than 2 minutes making your first batch.

These three sources above should satisfy almost anyone’s curiosity level.  PLEASE write us a comment about your first experience making biodiesel.