How To Save Money By Making Your Own Biodiesel At Home

Posted on time July 28th, 2009 by user Online Professional

The recent rises in petrol and diesel prices at the gas station forecourts has been astonishing. Every day when I drove past my local supermarket, the price had gone up by another 1, 2 or 3p per litre. Although it has now fallen back from the highest price of 132.9 pence per litre (that is about $12 per gallon!), it still means that my husband and I do not drive as much as we used to. And the kids are unhappy because we cannot afford as many days out at weekends.

Now I have a friend called Mark who likes to mess around with cars. I know that he converted one of his cars to run on LPG (liquid petroleum gas)some time ago, so I asked him for his advice about how we could fuel our diesel estate car more economically. That is when he told me about biodiesel.

It seems that he has been making biodiesel at home for the best part of 10 years! And he can produce it for around 45p (90c) per gallon. No - that is not a misprint!

He told me that it is very easy to make biodiesel from vegetable oil - the same stuff that you use for cooking. He collects waste cooking oil from several of our local fish & chip shops, and fast-food restaurants every 2-3 weeks. Most of them give the waste vegetable oil to him for nothing (they are glad to get rid of it), and a couple even pay him to take it away!

It takes a few hours over a weekend to “brew” a batch of biodiesel (he usually makes about 200 litres/44 gallons at a time) and then he just puts it in his car. His car has not required and modifications to run on biodiesel and it does not cause any problems. The only thing you notice is that his exhaust smells like fish & chips!

He has now produced a detailed, step-by-step guide ‘How To Make Biodiesel At Home Easily & Cheaply‘ that is selling like hot cakes on the Internet.

My husband is going to have a go next weekend, so I will keep you posted to let you know how he gets on.