burning vegie oil

[Kev]

I think this should go here?
I have been playing around with used vegi oil from fryers from our local legion.
I like theirs because they use it once and then replace it since a substancial amount of time between their meals. I know the viscosity is to high to atomize from a fuel oil burner pump. So I tried cutting the fryer oil with gas. depending on temp of oil storage. IE how cold is the oil when it hits the pump.
blends from 25 percent gas to 50 percent gas function ok. Since fuel oil prices are back to 3.50 a gallon here.(thats what they hit several years ago)
it seems to have merit. In tests (rather crude test at that)
(burner clamped to a block pointing at an old 30 gal. steel drum. with 10 gal of fresh well water in the barrel and the barrel cold to start with. the vegi gas mix seems to have less btu's (more time to begin boil) of course the 25 percent had more than the 50 percent. I could burn less than 25 but had inconsistent ignition on start up. That fact is my biggest concern from a safety stand point. IF that late ignition was in a arch (remember 25 percent gasoline?) the results could be beyond bad and well into the realm of tradgic to say the least.
So far in testing, the blend stays together at least a week without remixing. this is one of my other concerns as I am not confident that the blend is truly a solution and more of a suspension.
I am planning on doing a new round of tests with an old hydralic pump as the main burner pump to get high enough pressures to atomize pure vegi oil
has any one else been looking in this direction?
one test I did is put a 30 gal drum on a stand close to the back of the evaporater to pre heat pure oil then gravity fed that into a tee with valves to "blend" the fuel oil and vegi oil. the results ranged from very promising to why did i do that? I inadvertantly (brain fart) increased the vegi oil feed instead of decreasing. this caused a flame out with massive amounts of soot everywhere.
this test was done a couple years ago at the tail end of a season when the sap was not good and I was not going to keep it anyway. the biggest problem with this is having to keep adjusting the blend as the oil in the barrel gets warmer to keep a clean burn in the arch. It would work in a temp controled enviroment for the vegi oil in my opinion.
anyone else been playing around with this?

[Maple Hobo]

You need to research BIO diesel home production. It removes the impurities that will ruin your injection head, etc.
The recycled cooking oil is inconsistant and has a lot of impurities that need removed. Then you can use it like a fuel oil.
Most of the timew you'll still need to start and stop the bio fuel and use the standard fuel to clear the lines and clean the heads for a set amount of time. I think its 15-30 minutes before and after the use of the Bio D. This includes the time needed for the preheater to warm the Bio D. so it flows properly.

Research Bio Diesel... you'll see what I mean.

Arron

[Pete S]

I bet your experiments smell wonderful!

I agree. Go to youtube and check out some of the videos. I recall seeing a process that does something to adjust the viscosity, etc.

Good luck on an interesting idea!

[KenWP]

I have tried to spray vegie oil in a mist and we ended up having to heat it to get it to work.Even pure canol oil gets thick if you put it in a fridge let alone outside in the cold.Morons gave me hydrogenated fryer oil once to use and brought it to me in the hot summer and would not believe me it would be solid come winter.Was like hard lard in the pails and then they caught on.
Why can you not mix it with fuel oil instead of gas or even summer weight truck fuel.

[Kev]

I have tried to spray vegie oil in a mist and we ended up having to heat it to get it to work.Even pure canol oil gets thick if you put it in a fridge let alone outside in the cold.Morons gave me hydrogenated fryer oil once to use and brought it to me in the hot summer and would not believe me it would be solid come winter.Was like hard lard in the pails and then they caught on.
Why can you not mix it with fuel oil instead of gas or even summer weight truck fuel.

because the fuel oil is in the correct viscosity range for the pump and orifice. if I blend enough to really make a valid dent in the amount of fuel oil I use it is too thick unless the veg oil is heated to about 80 degrees. even then I was only able to blend in about 15 percent (guess, based on valve settings and color of fuel) but the pan did boil harder than straght fuel oil. Yet a bit to much caused flame out with masive soot. in effect even warm the fuel oil and veg oil do not seem to blend so it is spraying atomized fuel oil and drops of veg oil, the burn from the fuel oil then burns the oil droplets. if the amount of veg gets to high, it starts coating the inside of the arch before it can burn up.
thats why I went with gas as a thinning agent, shooting for a viscosity that is comparable to fuel oil at the same temp.
on the injectors and bio. fuel as far as contaminates:
I feel that is more of a factor in internal combustion engines the injectors have to seal off cumbustion chamber pressure. Both compression and the big bang at the end of compression. a fuel burner does not have to do that. yes contaminates can plug the orifice and smaller ones will wear out the orifice over time. An engineer at a large oil burner company is sure that if a pump is used that is capable of atomizing the oil were to be used the existing egnition system in place on oil burners would be sufficent to do the job. but electrodes MAY not last as long as designed (decades) due to the higher heat that they would be exposed to. higher heat....I like the sound of that for an evap :mrgreen:

[Timber Juice]

The suggestion to find out about BioDiesel is a good one.
Maybe someone nearby has a small processor and would love to swap out some good vegi for finished fuel.
Possibly an 8-1 to 5-1 ratio. Maybe add some syrup and get a better deal.

It will help keep your equipment operational.

Fuel oil was always a high grade fuel, clean and consistant vicousity.
Home fuel systems needed it to be.
Diesel fuel used to be whatever was leftover at the refinery was thrown into the diesel tank.
The old diesel engines could handle it.
These newer diesels are so sensitive that only the Ultra-filtered, thinned down Ultra Low Sulfur Diesel fuel will work in them.
Less energy per gallon and less lubrication for the upper cylinder area.

Biodiesel adds the lubrication back and some of the energy.
Burns cleaner than vegi-oil.

Let me try to show a comparison.
Say the vegi-oil molecules are the size of basketballs(and sticky).
The diesel, fuel oil, & biodiesel molecules the size of softballs.
The gasoline, ethanol are the size of golfballs.

Now dump them thru a funnel just a little bigger than a basketball.
The vegi-oil gets stuck. Spread the bballs out with a bunch of gballs and they won't get stuck so often, but it will be slow.

Heat up the vegi and its not quite as sticky, mix in some gas and its not as sticky, but the gas or heat does not make the vegi-oil molecule smaller. A bigger pump might push more thru, but that's alot of pressure on the system.

The biodiesel process makes the molecule smaller.

It breaks the three fatty-acid chains off the big glycerol molecule and hooks them up individually to the much smaller methanol molecule.
The glycerene is the by-product, it causes the heavy soot and coking on injector nozzles.
Never buy a used diesel that had a vegi-oil system hooked up on it. It will be wore out.
Now biodiesel use will actually make the old diesels last longer.

One last thing.
Mixing 25-50% gas in the vegi-oil?
Have you seen those old pianos and small cars launched by a Trebuchet?
That may be what your pans look like one day. KaBoom:o

Goodluck

[Kev]

thanks Timber.
One thing I have noticed with the fuel the guy delivered(veg has never been in my tank) it is no where as clean as the fuel I used in the past. Dad had put a fire brick in the arch to kick a some of the heat up to the front section of the pan. this year for the first time after about 24 hrs of burn time. there was a softball sized hunk of coke stuck to it.
After the season I will spend some time on the bio thing
Sadthing is right here in town a guy started building a bio plant with private monies and some fed money. he started it about 4 years ago... its sitting unfininshed and not producing.
I am sure if our wood prices were the same as many of you people we would be on wood. a cord of wood here goes for over 100. the last ad i saw in the classifieds said 120 per cord dumped in your driveway... If i were not so broke this year I would head north after our season ends and check out some of the wood fired systems up nort and see how real sugar makers do it :D

[Kev]

I found out my neighbor has been running bio in some of his stuff. skid steer ect. (I am sure he is not putting it in his diesel truck and avoiding motor fuel tax:) )
So I used his recipe but without the additive as I did not have any of that. most of the additive is for injectors but there is stuff in it to break down those long chains mentioned below. I plumed in a 5 gal bucket and a valve to my fuel supply line between the tank valve and the oil filter. The cocktail is actually to thin for my pump /orifice combination. but would ignite. I added more vegi to bring pump pressure back up. it will not ignite from the ignitor in this configuration.So i tossed a burning wad of paper towels in the arch and hit the switch. WE have lift off houston! (I am hoping that the additive will cure that and play with ignitor spacing ect. )the increased heat over fuel oil was obvious in 5 min. After 4 hours of cook time my evap rate was up 8 gal per hour over the average. 5 gal per hour over my personal best ever rate.
I also had to add a fan to the mix since I could not get a clean burn untill I upped the air fed to the burn. our pan sits on the arch and has a 1 inch gap at the front between the pan and the arch. Dad had tried filling it years ago to hold heat back to the front of the pan. it only sooted everything up way beyond bad. so I pointed a little squrrel cage fan at it and temps went way up. I have much dialing in to do but fuel oil just hit 4 bucks a gallon here and I am allmost out....again. for my trial run I bought 2 gal of kerosene, 1 gal of nolead and picked up used soybean fryer oil from our legion. you mix 15 percent buy volume of kerosene to the vegi oil you are going to treat then half as much nolead as you used kerosene. so my eleven dollar gas and kero purchase treats just over 13 gal of vegi oil = 16 plus gal of fuel. But that is at the standard rate. I ended up at about 17~ 20 percent petro based instead of the 22.5 percent petro based.
but for cost comparison lets stay at the 22.5
16 x 4 = 64 bucks
3 gal petro 11 bucks + vegi oil 0.00 = 11 bucks and a savings of 53 bucks in one nights burn (yes I used it all with the exception of about 3/4 of a gal)
but in truth I would have used more fuel oil than this with the longer burn time needed for the same gallons of evaporation.
I made 4 gal of syrup last night so I saved at least 3.31 cent per quart of syrup in fuel cost :)

[TimJ]

I was going to make a bio diesel processor (google "appleseed") a few years ago, but then had no time or space. I have a brand new, in the box kit (sans tanks and hot water heater) to trade or sell.

I'd love to see it get used for something - especially for making fuel for cars or sugaring.

PM me if interested. i am in NY or VT depending on the week.

[SPILEDRIVER]

if you can get ahold of LEW hear on the board he can help you....he has been running his own bio fuel in his evap for several years....real neat setup