this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2026

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-20

YSK fuel is heavily taxed, but you can avoid the taxes and reduce waste by making your own diesel without expensive equipment (lemmy.today)

submitted 2 days ago by StopTech@lemmy.today to c/youshouldknow@lemmy.world

20 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Many are complaining about fuel prices going up because of the war on Iran, but prices were already high because of high taxes:

US fuel taxes make up 20+% of the price
European fuel taxes make up half of the price
It appears 7.6% of the German government's revenue comes from fuel taxes.

You can avoid these taxes by making your own diesel at home, potentially saving money while reducing waste and being less dependent on geopolitical affairs.

Biodiesel is easy to make from new or used vegetable oil and can be used instead of diesel in 21st century cars.

Short version: https://www.wikihow.com/Make-Bio-Diesel
Long version: https://www.dudadiesel.com/biodiesel.php

If you want to save a lot of money, ask restaurants for their old cooking oil cheap or for free. Biodiesel can also be made from animal fat, which is cheaper than vegetable oil, but there are fewer guides on the process.

Diesel can also be made from used motor oil if you have a centrifuge and a still for distillation: https://carobjective.com/how-to-make-diesel-fuel-from-used-motor-oil/

How to make a simple still from a pressure cooker, copper tubing and bucket: https://www.instructables.com/How-to-make-a-still/

Making a fractional distillation column isn't that much harder: https://www.instructables.com/Build-a-Lab-Quality-Distillation-Apparatus/

With this you could potentially separate crude oil into various components and use them for both gas and diesel cars, stoves, heating, oil lamps or sell them. Small sellers may be exempt from taxes depending on where you live.

For gasoline you could also try the ideas here, although they seem to be expensive or impractical for road users: https://www.wikihow.com/Make-Synthetic-Gasoline

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[–] dan@upvote.au 2 points 1 day ago

You can also avoid the cost of gas/petrol prices by using an electric vehicle. I pay $0 to fuel mine since I have solar panels.

[–] Iconoclast@feddit.uk 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

This is only marginally more practical and economical than drilling and refining your own oil.

[–] JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.social 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

There used to be something called a "GreaseCar" conversion kit. It would modify a diesel engine to accept cooking oil without any special preparation. The main thing would be to semi-regularly change a special filter, but that was it IIRC.

@stoptech@lemmy.today

[–] StopTech@lemmy.today 1 points 18 hours ago

Interesting thanks!

[–] reddig33@lemmy.world 10 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I think this depends on where you live. For example, gasoline is heavily subsidized in the US, and federal gas taxes haven’t been raised since 1993.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_taxes_in_the_United_States

[–] StopTech@lemmy.today 0 points 2 days ago

My understanding is that the vast majority of US subsidies in this area are for production rather than consumption subsidies aimed at reducing the price (only $44 billion out of $760 billion). The US is also on the lower end of fossil fuel subsidies compared to other countries at $28.16 per person in 2021, which seems considerably less than how much each person would have paid in fuel taxes that year.

[–] Peruvian_Skies@sh.itjust.works 7 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Seems like a great way to fuck up your engine.

[+] StopTech@lemmy.today -8 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Only if you don't follow the instructions

[–] MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz 8 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

That's not entirely true.

While biodiesel is a real thing, you will not get a result that is safe for long term (or short term) use out of something like used cooking oil without some serious effort to sufficiently filter out contamination.

This is not DIY level stuff. In a lab your yields will be low and slow, and doing it at scale is expensive enough that biodiesel isn't much of an industry compared to the stuff made from crude.

That might change with prices climbing but few are going to be turning fats into fuel in their back yard.

[–] StopTech@lemmy.today -3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Like I said, follow the instructions. That includes removing impurities if you're working with used cooking oil. If it's unused then that simplifies things.

Doing it at scale may not be economical because of taxes as well as the fact you either need to buy expensive vegetable oil or collect large amounts of used oil from disparate places. For personal use the taxes are avoided and you may be able to get sufficient used oil from a couple of restaurants or neighbors.

[–] MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz 7 points 2 days ago (2 children)

You're speaking with confidence you can't have, as you're using wording that makes it clear you've no actual experience.

[–] Paragone@lemmy.world 8 points 2 days ago

StopTech doesn't understand that when biodiesel is manufactured properly, the hydrocarbon-chain-lengths are limited to the appropriate-for-that-specific-type-of-fuel lengths-range.

Used cooking-oil is chemically a mess & will void the warranties on engines, in its 1st use.

NO engine-manufacturer ought have to warranty ANY engine that has had random "fuel" burned in it.

That it'll "work", for awhile .. while wrecking sensors, gumming/laquering/carbonizing all kinds of things in the engine, enforcing that the engine-itself won't be able to perform properly soon .. that is a wartime-only "solution", in my eyes.

MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz you are right, on this one, I hope readers of this page see.

_ /\ _

[–] StopTech@lemmy.today -1 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I'm only speaking from what I have read. Apparently it is perfectly fine to run engines on biodiesel from using cooking oil or diesel from used motor oil as long as you have a good filtering process using a centrifuge. And I'm not saying that everyone will be able to save or make money this way, just that it's something one could explore and at least limit the amount of tax they give to a corrupt government.

[–] Peruvian_Skies@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

You're so fixated on taxes that you didn't even stop to consider the price of a centrifuge.

[–] StopTech@lemmy.today 1 points 1 day ago (2 children)

https://www.instructables.com/How-to-Build-a-High-Speed-Centrafuge/

Only necessary for filtering used oil, however

[–] bearboiblake@pawb.social 1 points 1 day ago

The best way to make a homemade centrifuge is to use an old washing machine or something like that.

[–] Peruvian_Skies@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

lol do you really think that will work?

[–] MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 day ago

I'm only speaking from what I have read.

Plus a lot of assumptions.

Such as a homemade centrifuge being sufficient to produce lab-grade results.

[–] vext01@feddit.uk 3 points 2 days ago

Very few people have diesel vehicles in the uk.

[–] blimthepixie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I've ran various vehicles off SVO and WVO but I just switched to red because of the faf.

When the red 'ban' came in and you needed to fill out that stupid fucking form I just switched to kero.

Used to mix it with 10-25% used motor oil and then filter it through a few jay cloths.

I've got a pre filter on the van so that catches all the gunk without fucking up the main.

Now with kero being so expensive I'll probably just go back to SVO