Exhaust heated WVO and livestock tank heater???

[94IDIT]

Ok this is gonna be a long post so bear with me... I'm thinking about building a WVO tank out of a bed mounted tool box (gullwing behind the cab). Now I live in what is sometimes a VERY cold climate, and a complaint I hear with running just a regular tank heater, heat exchanger, HIH etc is that in extreme cold the WVO in the tank never really heats up to usable temp even after excessive idiling. That being the case I was thinking why not run a stack through the tank? I'm not really the biggest fan of them but there's no reason to waste the exahaust heat that's generated. Just cut two holes and run it through the "toolbox tank." Would that over heat the WVO and potentially be a hazard?? I don't really know what the boiling point of veg is. Or how hot a stack would get. I do know however that a mobile Ford grease fire would be the epitome of "Inderectile Dysfunction". Just a thought. Has anyone ever seen anything like this done? Also I was thinking about putting a tank heater from a livestock tank on or in the WVO tank and hook it up to a timer just like the block heater and have it kick on a few hours before I have to drive anywhere, so the veg would already be warmed up. So what do yall think? Good ideas? Bad ideas? Constructive critisism is welcomed...

 

[OLDBULL8]

Peanut oil is used in submarines to cook with as it will only start to smoke at 480 degrees. With running the exhaust thru the tank, it would have to be run across the bottom, but then when the level is low I would think the WVO would get very hot and generate a lot of fumes/smoke pressurizing the tank. WVO and WMO would vaporize/smoke at a much lower temp, I would think around 250 degrees, exhaust temp at 55 MPH would be 500 + or - at least my pyro indicates that. Unless the tank is made of steel and not aluminium, you can't weld aluminium to steel and make it hold with all the movement it would have. How would you seal the toolbox cover? Bad idea.

 

[Jake_IN]

I agree with OldBull about running it across the bottom. I think a pipe going straight up through the tank really is gonna conduct much heat to the oil. Might help to maybe copy gas water heaters that have the weird wavy strip that goes in the pipe that goes up through the center of the tank and do something like that on your tank. I think its suppose to help conduct heat to into the water and would probably work the same for this setup.

 

[94IDIT]

Peanut oil is used in submarines to cook with as it will only start to smoke at 480 degrees. With running the exhaust thru the tank, it would have to be run across the bottom, but then when the level is low I would think the WVO would get very hot and generate a lot of fumes/smoke pressurizing the tank. WVO and WMO would vaporize/smoke at a much lower temp, I would think around 250 degrees, exhaust temp at 55 MPH would be 500 + or - at least my pyro indicates that. Unless the tank is made of steel and not aluminium, you can't weld aluminium to steel and make it hold with all the movement it would have. How would you seal the toolbox cover? Bad idea.

The toolbox is steel. I was just gonna divide the toolbox in half with some steel, remove the lid and weld a steel plate over the top of the one side and put a fill cap on it that way only one half of the box is a tank, and the other half is a still a toolbox... Hmmm, I don't know if I explained that very well. Sorry, hopefully that makes sense.

Thanks for the info by the way.

 

[towtruckdave]

If 1 tank heater is not enough, use 2 on a thermostat.

 

[94IDIT]

I guess I hadn't thought about running it across the bottom. That would probably work quite well. I'll have to look into doing that then. I'll admit, I did kinda have second thoughts about running it through the tank, but I guess it never hurts to ask

 

[G. Mann]

Exhaust systems erode over time, and rust, and leak, so the risk factor goes up using that as a heating element. Plus there is no way to control how much heat you transfer into the WVO so you will eventually build up coke along the heat transfer element [whatever you choose to use] WVO coke is half burned oil that is a great insulator so pretty soon, you have a system full of "snot" that doesn't work and clogs your injectors and pump.

Suggest you look into using a heat transfer loop off the heater supply line. With that, you are tapped into the engine cooling system, which is temp controlled via the thermostat at 180F. Good operating temp for WVO is 140F at the injection pump. At that temp the WVO viscosity is thin enough to get good spray pattern and not coke up the injectors.
If you plumb in a couple of good ball valves you can turn on or off the hot water flow to the WVO tank to send heat, or bypass it.
You could use an old air conditioning condensor at a heat exchanger mounted in the bottom of the tank, with bulkhead fittings through the side to bring in hot water and seal the oil from the water. AC systems hold something like 300 psi of pressure so should be no problem there.
If you use any preheat system such as you are considering, you may not want to heat the whole tank of oil and instead have a "heating chamber" that holds maybe 5 gallons and replenishes it's self from the rest of the tank. That way, it doesn't take a 100 miles of driving to get oil that is thin enough to pump and burn. With the smaller chamber, shortly after the engine comes to temp [heater blows good hot air] you start heating oil to a useable temp.
Good Luck

 

[G. Mann]

Forgot to mention, you will want to start and shutdown on straight diesel so you don't have gelled WVO setting in the injectors after the engine cools down.... [don't ask how I learned this].
What works well is to start on pump diesel, warm up the WVO, switch over to WVO, then switch back to diesel last couple miles to clear the system. Cold WVO and cold engine is a potential "no start"...with lots of clean and purge before you get a start.