Vegetable Oil SVO WVO waste cooking oil as biofuel

[Espana]

A blend of 75% WVO, 8% HHO diesel and 17%turps. gives a successful burn in the military burner i.e. tent heater. Operating through the full range of the carburator settings, fuel consumption was measured as follows:- full setting, no9, 1ltr/hr. Min.setting no2, 2hrs 35min/ltr. Apart from initial combustion the burn was smoke free. Deposit in base burner after trials, less than 1oz. Deposit loose and flakey - easily removed.

[coachgeo]

A blend of 75% WVO, 8% HHO diesel and 17%turps. gives a successful burn in the military burner i.e. tent heater. Operating through the full range of the carburator settings, fuel consumption was measured as follows:- full setting, no9, 1ltr/hr. Min.setting no2, 2hrs 35min/ltr. Apart from initial combustion the burn was smoke free. Deposit in base burner after trials, less than 1oz. Deposit loose and flakey - easily removed.

Thanx for this info. Keep us posted on your experements with these units. I have two on the way. One will be for my shop and camper the other for my cabin when I'm home.

[Espana]

Thanx for this info. Keep us posted on your experements with these units. I have two on the way. One will be for my shop and camper the other for my cabin when I'm home.

The reason why I choose the military tent heater, which is a vapourising pot burner, for my experiments in burning WVO was pure and simple, I already had knowledge of vapour. pot burners, albeit from HHO use and I was forced to consider this type because my mains electrical supply was not secure. Living on the edge of the 'mains' can sometimes mean no supply at all. The vapour pot burner is a simple design using atmospheric/chimney draught technology and basically that is that, no ifs buts and wherefores.
Encased in a suitable enclosure with an adequate chimney this simple burner can give space heating and or hot water. No fuss, no bother and if designed correctly will also give a wet central heating supply with no pump requirement and therefore no electrical supply required. Although the military burner will run on a multitude of fuels including petrol (no I have not tried petrol and have no intension of doing so), it will not burn straight WVO with any success. The WVO has too high a viscosity and the cetane number is too low to give a blue flame, hence the blend of WVO/Turpentine/HHO. Turpentine thins the oil, reducing the viscosity and aiding flow through the carburator, HHO increases the cetane number and so aids combustion or is it the way around or a mixture of the two? I am not a combustion engineer nor a chemist. The blend of 75% WVO/ 17% turps./8%HHO was arrived at through trial and error, and also the search for the holy grail of burner flame, a blue flame. The type of WVO that I obtain is a mixture of olive oil and sunflower oil and the 75/17/8% blend that gives a blue flame is true to my collection. It may differ slightly with other types of oil, if you have a vapour pot burner experiment with the blend but always have the aim for a clean burn blue flame even one that as a yellow tip is very successful. In the next few days I will post a link to a site where you can view a simple workshop heater using an old grease can as a burner body, easily built in a morning, using a vapour pot burner. Price of a vapour. pot burner?, obtainable on e-bay from around $26 plus postage. Also available in the UK from the same American supplier for approx £58 delivered, just type in tent heater on the e-bay search engine, ---excellent value for money and no I do not have any link, financial or otherwise to the supplier, he is just an honest man selling a very, very good product

[John Galt]

Turpentine thins the oil,

Are you using real pure gum turpentine, or a petro based paint thinner called 'turps'

[Espana]

...Are you using real pure gum turpentine, or a petro based paint thinner called 'turps'

According to the label on the can, it is a hydrocarbon turpentine mixed with a small percentage of naptha so obviously the petrol based type. The cost of the blend is approx Euro 0.28cents based on Euro 5.17 for 5 ltrs of turps and Euro 0.89 cents for HHO over a 5 ltr mx. (3.725ltrWVO/.850HHO/.425ltrturps.) Which I find will give a blue flame on all settings of the carburator.

[Espana]

As promised, here is the link to view details of the trial burner rig which can also be used as a workshop heater. Please note that straight WVO cannot be burnt successfully in a vapourising pot burner, it must be blended. The link is:-
http://i256.photobucket.com/albums/hh18 ... estrig.jpg

also

http://i256.photobucket.com/albums/hh18 ... boiler.jpg

[Espana]

Been on an extended holiday back home and took the opportunity of stocking up on hard to obtain or expensive items here in Spain but now ready to go. On average approx. 15% of my collected WVO is fat and as my 'pool' of filtered oil is increasing - so is the collection of fat. It is my intension to clean the fat by first of all heating, to lower the viscosity and evaporate any water, and then passing through a filter to remove other extraneous items. I then hope to reintroduce the cleaned fat (small percentage) back into the filtered WVO. I expect the fat content to settle out but over what time I could not hazard a guess, so only small quantities to start with. Perhaps agitation would help to keep the fat in suspension. Anyway, hope to have some results in the next 7/10 days.

[Espana]

Sorry for the delay, 10 days here in Spain can be a very long time - perhaps I have caught the manana attitude at last! I have some good news on the re-addition issue and something of a problem on the oil settlement / filtration system that I use for cleaning the initial supply of the wvo. First the good news.
The oil that I collect is passed through a series of settlement tanks, the first one taking out the vast majority of water and the heavier fats plus a small amount of oil. The final tanks (2) reduce the level of lighter fats to a negligible amount. The cleaned oil is then stored in a 1000 litre tank, the oil being drawn of in small quantities and blended as required. The average waste quantity is approx five lts. which after re-settlement over a 3 day period yields 11/2 liters of oil which is reintroduced back into the filtration system. The remaining waste is disposed of at our local re-cycling plant, this consists of approx 1 ltr of water - 21/2 ltrs of fats. It is this remnant of 21/2 ltr of fats that interest me as a source of fuel, as an addition to the blend, for my vapourising pot burner.
First I heat the fat in an old deep fat fryer until the fat liquifies and boils. At this point I reduce the temperature of the fryer until the fat boils at a soft boiland continue to boil for a further 5 minutes to drive off excess water. The hot fat is then drained off via a drain point in the base of the fryer and passed through a cloth filter until finally being collected in a 5 litre heavy duty plastic bottle. The fat is the allowed to cool to ambient room temp.
If I compare this refined fat to a sample of fat straight from the first settlement tank there is a marked difference. The refined fat is smoother and a little lighter in colour. The 'veins' seen in unrefined fat (water) have gone completly. It is this refined fat that I used in tests to determine the amount of fat that I can reintroduce back into the blend, but at what percentage?
The normal blend that I use in the vapourising pot is 74.5% cleaned wvo, 17% synthetic turpentine and 8.5% heating oil. This gives a good clean blue flame on all settings of the carb. It is the blue flame that is crucial to the burning of the blend but other equally important considerations have to be taken into consideration. With all vapourising pot burners the chimney air pressure is vital as this dictates the flow of air into the burner. Too little air - very dirty flame with sticky deposits - too much air and a run away burner situation occurs and if allowed to continue a major fire hazard will result. On the military pot burner which I use as my test rig, the burner was designed for a 4'' dia flue at 6 metre height. On my test rig I get the required air pressure on a 3 metre height. (Sorry for the digression, but the burner set up is very important .) Using the above blend, I mixed in total 5 ltr. of fuel i.e. 3.725 lts of cleaned wvo, .850lts of syn. turps. and .425ltr. of heating oil, this gives me the basic blend which is proven. I then went on to mix percentages of fat to the blend to determine if the burner would continue to burn clean i.e. blue flame. The percentages were 5, 10, 15, 20%
The results are as follows:-
5% - no noticeable difference in burning, at completion of burn deposit in base of pot loose and flakey, easy to clean.
10% - no noticeable difference in burning, still a blue flame, at completion of burn deposit in base of pot loose and flakey.
15% - flame showing sign of yellow at tip, on completion of burn deposit is greasy.
20% - some blue in flame but mainly yellow, also flame appears to be 'lazy', on completion deposit is very greasy and there is a very noticeable amount of soot beggining to form in the pot and burner unit.
As you can see from the above, 10% addition of refined fat (that is 10% of 5lts of initial blend bringing the total amount to 5.5lts) burns in the pot with no noticeable problem. There was the usual smoke on initial lighting which lasted for a period of less than 1 minute, after that, smokless. No smell during burn period. It must be noted that the blend including the addition of fat was burnt shortly after mixing. Now that I have a new blend with the addition of fat, I must look into the situation of settlement as my proposed 'day' tank is in the region of 40lts, approx 40 hours at high setting or 120 hrs on low.
To-day a problem occured in the settlement of fats in the last 2 tanks. The oil in these tanks is normally reasonably clear but this morning (06.07.08)
after pouring 18lts into the system the oil in the 2 tanks in question became 'milky' - contaminated with light fats. Each tank has a drain valve in the base which I regulary use to drain off deposits. The system has been running for some 8 months with no problem but temperatures here for the last 4 days have constantly been in the mid 30s C during the day and 25 C at night and last night we had a weather depression pass over us with a thunder storm. Any ideas out there?

[Espana]

I think that I may have found the answer to the contamination problem mentioned above. Yesterday,8th of July, I drained the last tank off via the bottom drain valve. The oil flowed clear. Decanted approx 60 lts. and then the oil started to flow 'milky', 12 lts in total until the tank drained fully. The contamination is in fact a very light fat obviously floating on top of the cleaned oil. First time that this as happened. Has anyone out there had this problem or knows what this 'fat' is? Anyway took the oppertunity to clean out the tank and reinstall. I have some doubt that further contamination may still be present in number 1 & 2 tanks, will verify on the next addition of wvo into the system.

[Espana]

Daily temp. in this part of Spain has for the last few weeks been hovering around 35C. with a night time low of 26C. (5am) At these temps. I am finding it very hard to successfully filter the WVO that I collect. Anyone out there have any suggestions?

[Espana]

Temp.s here have now fallen to 25C daytime -- 17C night and the problem of cloudy filtered oil as ceased so obviously (?) temps over 30 give rise to the lighter fats passing through the final filter. In the meantime have purchased via e-bay a Harmony II stove normally fueled by domestic heating oil and sporting a vapourising pot burner. This stove should be an ideal candidate for the use of the blend of waste veg. oil/ turpentine/ D.H.O. Have ripped out the wood burning stove and the pressure jet boiler situated in the garage and are busy refitting the Harmony in their place. Stove in position with the primary pipes run. Still to fit the hot water cylinder and make the connections into the existing central heating system. Due to the layout of the house and typical Spanish building practice (concrete roof) this means making access into the roof space and entering through the sun terrace wall. Also, I am undecided at the moment as to weather to preheat the oil by electric trace element prior to the boiler as there is a 7 metre run, all exposed on a north facing wall before the oil supply pipework enters in the house. Plus, by using the above blend I can reduce the viscosity by approx. 2/3s the difference in comparison to straight veg oil/ domestic heating oil. It is very rare for us to experience temps. as low freezing point here but it gets pretty near and we only live a kilometre from the Med. Will post photographs as the work progresses. There is approx 4 days work but have planned to complete the work by mid October, I am retired and still enjoying the late summer sun so no rush at the moment.

[Espana]

Friday, 24th October 3.15pm. Finally completed all plumbing work and lit the heater for the first time. On initial firing using straight 35sec.heating oil in order to to balance the carb on a known setting. Had to restrict (lower the flow rate ) on low burn. This could be good news as with the higher viscosity of the WVO blend I need more opening to compensate for the 'thicker' flow rate of WVO. Tomorrow hope to increase the rate of firing in order to balance the central heating side of the boiler then start with the WVO blend. Bad news, visitors coming on Monday for a short break so may not have much time for experimenting with the WVO, will keep you informed on all events. Photos of the installation coming within the few days.

[coachgeo]

There seems to also have been a good bit of success in firing up this military heater using provided carb then switch to WVO that is fed from a hospital dosing pump. The dosing pump does not care the viscosity.. it will still dose at the prescribed rate/min ad programed.

A run of the feed pipe around the flame to thin it out before it hits the bottom of the pot seems to do the trick.

More on this HERE.

The post that get into the dosing pump are from user "IMakeBiodiesel". He does use yellow grease as he calls it in this burner though.

[Espana]

Have just run the Harmony 11 for 5 days non stop. Weather here in south east Spain this past week as been very poor, snow above the 600m altitude, plenty of rain and very cold for this location and even though we had visitors here, I mixed up the blend and poured it into the 'day tank'. To-day, Saturday, switched off the stove to examine the 'fallout' from burning the stove on blended veg. oil.
There was the expected 'crud' in the base of the pot, to a depth of around 8mm and indeed the catalyser, which is normally suspended off the base, had a deposit of crud around it's base. The really good news about this crud is that it is dry and is easy to remove. The stove was cleaned and ready to go back into opperation within the hour. Previous experiments to determine the ratio of the blend, using the tent heater and the half stove heater body did lead me to expect a crud deposit to the base of the heater pot. I have substituted stove paraffin instead of turps. into the blend as it is now cheaper to purchase. Have also increased the percentage of paraffin in the blend to increase the cetain level, (lowering the WVO percentage by 12%). This also has the added benifit of slightly decreasing the viscosity. Heat output from the stove on a low setting (750ml/hr) is more than sufficient to give large room heating (140 cubic/m) and lashings of hot water.
My next and hopefully last alteration to the system is to make half of the central heating side of the circuit to work on the thermo-syphon principle, therefore reducing the period for pump assistance. This work scheduled for late November.

[Espana]

Within the last 3 days have finally completed the small alteration to the central heating layout. Near to the new burner position was a radiator which was surplus to requirement, so on the installation of the new WVO burner/boiler, this radiator was removed leaving the flow and return pipes in position. I re-plumbed the return pipe via a u bend back towards the boiler and Tee'ed the pipe into the main return immediatley before connection into the boiler. I now have gravity fed central heating to the 'west wing' of the house (radiators in the lounge, bedroom, bathroom and my office) Other sections of the house cannot be run on gravity due to the layout of the original plumbing. I still retain a pumped supply which runs from a timer, switching on and off to predetermined 15 minute intervals/hour. With this system I have full central heating. Looking through my stock items, I found an electronic multi programmable timer which can be set for an innumerable number of on / off periods. This coupled with a room thermostat and seperate high and low level thermostats fitted to the flow and return pipes from the boiler should give a fully automatic system. Photo's following.