How to Make Biodiesel

Incredibly or not, the first diesel engine didn't use petroleum diesel to power itself, but instead it used vegetable oil. Most of us recognize the German engineer, Rudolf Diesel, as the father of the diesel engine, but the truth is that the first internal combustion engine, which operated on a diesel cycle, has first been built by Herbert Akroyd Stuart and Charles Richard Binney, one year before Diesel built its first engine, and they have received a patent for their invention three years before Diesel.

Diesel engines represent a variation of the classical internal combustion engine running of Otto cycles, and is mostly distinctive through its different ignition system which, unlike the classical gasoline engines that use spark plugs to light the fuel mixture, uses a compression ignition technique, in which the fuel-air mixture is being injected in the piston and compressed until the fuel self ignites.

Now, all the diesel powered cars use a diesel fuel, obtained through fractional distillation from petroleum oil; however, though the diesel engines have evolved from the original engine that was built in 1890, they are still able to work with multiple types of vegetable oil, or biodiesels.

If you want to spare yourself from a trip to the gas station and learn a bit of chemistry, you could use some items, which can be found in most of the supermarkets, in order to make your own biodiesel, to power your diesel engine car.

Here is what you need: 250 mililiters of fuel additive, or methanol, 4 grams of caustic solution, one litre of vegetable oil, protective equipment such as eyewear, rubber gloves, a container airtight seal, a 2 litre PET bottle, and a funnel.

Begin by mixing the methanol and caustic solution in the airtight seal container, preferable a glass jar, and shake it until the caustic solution completely dissolves in the methanol. Be advised, this mixture should be prepared in a well ventilated area!

After the methanol-lye solution has been prepared, heat up the vegetable oil to a temperature of 60 degrees Celsius, and pore it into the PET bottle by using the funnel, after which pore the methanol-lye solution that was prepared earlier, in the same bottle and shake it for 20 to 40 seconds.

The obtained solution will deposit a precipitation of Glycerin at the bottom of the PET bottle in the next twenty minutes, leaving behind an upper cloudy layer. Put the bottle aside for 1 to 2 days, after which the upper layer will become clear and can be drawn out of the bottle to extract the biodiesel.