Making your own biodiesel is now fast, easy and safe.

Biodiesel is known by the chemical name "Fatty-Acid Methyl Ester". This fancy name just means that it’s a simple molecule made from vegetable oil. It is a fuel with high-energy content and proper viscosity to operate reliably in all diesel vehicles and equipment.

Because it's made from a naturally-grown crop it is basically solar energy in liquid form! The chemical reaction to make biodiesel is fairly straight forward.

Vegetable oil is a 'triglyceride' which means three hydrocarbon chains all attached to the same glycerol molecule. It takes a certain amount of catalyst (in our case, lye) to break off these hydrocarbon chains. In the case of used cooking oils, we must add yet more lye to the reaction to neutralize the "free fatty acids" that have been formed in waste oil. This catalyst is dissolved into methyl alcohol (methanol) with a volume representing 20% of the oil we want to convert.

This 'premix' is then blended vigorously with the oil to allow complete conversion of the oil. The blending allows the catalyst to break off each hydrocarbon chain, one by one, and bond with a floating methanol molecule to form biodiesel. The stripped glycerol molecules fall to the bottom of the reaction tank where they are removed.

Biodiesel is produced by chemically modifying renewable, biologically based (biomass) oil or fats by reacting them with methanol+catalyst and then separating/purifying the reaction products. This reaction also produces glycerol and fatty acids as co-products. Biodiesel can be used to displace petroleum-based fuel in diesel engines, which account for approximately 22% of the fuel consumed in the transportation sector (EIA Annual Energy Outlook 2006 - available: http://www.doe.eia.gov/aeo2006/). It can be also be used in other combustion equipment (e.g., boilers and heaters) as a replacement for petroleum distillate oil fuels. The current conventional feedstock sources for producing biodiesel are oil crops (e.g., soybean, canola), waste vegetable oils from restaurants and other food processing plants, or animal fats. Proposed unconventional (not yet commercially available) feedstock sources include oil extracted from wastewater sludge, algae, and corn oil from ethanol processing.

In the United States, biodiesel is made primarily from soybean oil and secondarily from a product called yellow grease, which is essentially used restaurant cooking oil. It can also be made from tallow, a hard fat that comes from cattle or sheep, which is frequently used to make soap and other products.

With a FuelMeister II you don't have to be a plumber or mechanic to make your own biodiesel. This is not a hobby kit but a complete system engineered with quality materials. You get all the specialized equipment and supplies you need to start making biodiesel that same day. Some assembly is required. All you need to add is vegetable oil, methanol, lye, electricity and tap water.

The whole setup fits comfortably in the corner of your garage. And because it's a "closed" system you won't have to pour or stir any liquids. The patent pending Direct Catalyst Injection design provides for goof-proof lye dissolving as well as metering and mixing and premix into the oil. It will turn even heavily used cooking oil into clean burning, biodegradable and smooth-running biodiesel.

Whatever you own that runs on diesel fuel you can power with the biodiesel you produce with your own FuelMeister II biodiesel production system.

NOW YOU'RE READY TO MAKE BIODIESEL!!