Perfect timing on this thread, since I would really like to run at least part WVO in my 89 non turbo IDI. WVO is hard to get near me because I live in an area with a small population, and of the folks that are here, fewer than normal dine on fried food, and there's also an organic farmer in the area who goes through over 3000 gallons a year of WVO that he makes into biodiesel to run in his greenhouses' oil burners- which means that there is a lot more demand around here than in most places, relative to population.
I do seem to have a lead on some good WVO from a quality ethnic restaurant, and would really like to run it in my IDI, but like a lot of the rest of you, I cannot make it fly if I have to advance $$$$ to save $$, nor can I turn the yard, barn, or cellar into a total oily mess. Given the unusual difficulty of getting WVO here, or the fact that the grease tycoons might move in on whoever I try to line up, I just can't justify any big time or money that might end up as a stranded project.
The smartest idea that I have heard yet came from a guy I knew who'd converted his oil furnace to run on WVO (this involved preheating and use of a special nozzle that used compressed air in addition to the pumped oil, so that it'd atomize even the thick oil); he would bring home the oil in 5 gallon pails and then had a set up where they'd go in his laundry room with a very slow siphon tube that led to the bottom of a 55 gallon drum in his cellar, which sat on a small stand so that it was off the floor. I think he said that he had a 40 watt wrap type heater (or maybe it was heat tape) wrapped around the barrel so that it would stay warmer than cellar temperature, and the whole thing was in an insulated box. As the newly arrived oil went into the bottom of the big drum, other oil that had collectively been sitting a long time would very slowly rise to the top, where it would go out a spout on the side of the barrel not too far from the top (it was set up low enough from the top that the barrel would not overflow over the top of the barrel even if the spout clogged). By doing this, at least as he explained it to me, the big barrel was almost always settling out water and any particles, and was never getting mixed around by the introduction of the new oil. Once in a while he'd drain off the bottom of the big barrel so that he could remove accumulated water and particles. From what he told me, this worked well enough that he could do some really minor filtering and then run the oil straight through one last fine filter prior to his oil burner on the boiler, as well as a car that he ran on SVO with very few mods to the car. He's deceased now, but worked in the part of Brookhaven Nat'l lab that focused on oil-fired heating technologies, so he knew what he was doing.
