Officially a real Oil Burner

[bbjordan]

After months of building and tweaking my Waste Motor Oil processing system, and hours of centifuging the WMO, I finally dared to try some in the antique truck. My mix is 70% WMO, 10% RUG (Regular Unlead Gas), and 20% Biodiesel. I poured about 20 liters into my front fuel tank which still had some of my WiDE (Water in Diesel Emulsion) fuel in it. After the engine got to operating temp, I flipped to the front tank and ran it for a few kilometers. I didn't notice a difference. I switched back to the rear tank right away because we almost at the inlaw's and I wanted to start it on regular D2 diesel. On the way home I flipped it to the front tank and it seemed to rattle less. This is a good thing, because I'm pretty sure I have the timing set too far advanced. Previously, I had some problems with the engine dying if I took my foot off the go pedal too soon. I had tried the ATF in the fuel filter trick, and it seemed to be slowly getting better, but after using the new WMO fuel, the problem seems to have gone away.

Anyway, I'm pumped that it works as well as it did, and now I'm officially a real Oil Burner.

I'll post a video of my WMO system in action soon.

 

[BDCarrillo]

Congrats! I've been through about 10000 miles of WMO and loved every minute of it. It feels weird to drive the mustang and have to fuel it up!!

 

[IDIoit]

i hope to join these ranks in the near future!
afterall, thats why i got my first IDI.
then my 2nd 3rd 4th ...........
the 87 will stay on #2
but the 94 and 90 will both get WMO

 

[laserjock]

I have aspirations of eventually farming my own algae for biodiesel. Even designed up the reactor. Maybe some day.

 

[bbjordan]

Update

Two weekends ago, I took the antique out to the farm. I only used the WMO mix after the engine was up to operating temp. It ran like a champ. It seems to like the WMO mix. It got about the same mileage as D2, and handled the hills without a problem. Sitting at the lights, it smells like its burning oil.
No problems with warm starts. Cold starts were all done on D2. So far, so good.

Next test: WMO in the PSD.

 

[homelessduck]

It's a pretty awesome feeling cruising down the highway burning homemade, recycled fuel ! My truck loved it. I only stopped running it because I finally got a hold of some bad oil and didn't find out until after I processed it and filled the rear tank. I haven't wanted to pump it out, drop the tank and clean it again so I just went back to diesel in the front. Also, after processing around 900 gallons or so my processing system started having issues and I haven't redesigned it yet. I just need a better pump and new hoses.. I was running 90% wmo / 5% rug / 5% diesel.

 

[bbjordan]

Yes, it is a good feeling cruising down the road on cheap home-made fuel. Although it's only cheap if I don't include the cost of my centrifuge system. I have a little less than $500. into my system. With the mix that I'm running, 70% WMO, 10% RUG, 20% Biodiesel, my cost is about 25 cents/litre. The break even point is going to be about about 3 barrels worth of WMO mix. Not bad considering I'm about half way there already!

For those interested in the mileage figures. I estimate about 6.3 km/l or 15 mpg US, which is bout the same as I was getting with D2. That's not bad for a 3 ton + truck!

 

[BDCarrillo]

Barrel... As in 55gal?

Trying to figure out imperial equivalents

 

[bbjordan]

Yup. 55 Gal US, 46 Gal Imp, 210 Litres...actually 208 Litres. I grew up knowing them as 45 Gallon drums.

Third barrel has had the water boiled out, and is on the 'fuge.

 

[bbjordan]

Update #2

Took the 1997 LB PSD to Saskatoon and back. Used approx. 165 litres of about a 50/50 blend of the 10% WiDE I had left with mix of 70% WMO, 10% RUG, and 20% Biodiesel. The PSD seemed to like it. Lots of power and quiet. It is a little stinky sitting at the lights tho.

I got 7.6 km/l or about 18 mpg US. Not too bad for a 3+ ton truck with over 300,000 km on it and an engine with so much blow-by it comes out the dipstick tube.

All cold starts were done on D2. Hot starts on WMO were no problem. It almost seemed to start easier than on D2.

According to my calcs, the cost per km works out to 3.28 cents. Cost per mile is about 5.26 cents.

 

[bbjordan]

Update #3

Second long trip with WMO to the folk's farm. This time the mix was 67% WMO, 14% RUG, and 19% Biodiesel. This fuel was used straight up; not mixed with diesel. It ran normally on the trip out to the farm. It sure smells like an oil burner.

At the farm, I was using the truck to boost the '91 CC and I noticed that it appeared to be smoking a lot more than usual at idle. It was running on D2, as I switch it to D2 well before I shut it down.

On the way home running on WMO it ran good. I noticed that no one followed too closely tho. Maybe the smell?

Getting close to home I switched back to D2. Shortly after, the wife says we're smoking. (I have her trained to check. )
We certainly are! Holy crap! It is smoking so much, I think we are going to be arrested for crimes against mother nature!

I'm thinking maybe the newish injectors and/or piston rings are coked?

After some research on the internet on how to clean the injectors, I figured I would try running some biodiesel through the engine, and failing that, I would try some SeaFoam.

The rear tank had about 3/8 of a tank of D2 in it. 23 litres of biodiesel was added, which brought it up to just under the full mark. Hmmm, the fuel gauge must be not reading correctly. The rear tank is supposed to hold 71 litres. Maybe I'm getting better mileage than I thought. ;p

2 days later, it fired up ok, but holy smoky! It was a good thing it was getting dark. I slunk out of the neighbourhood to draw as little attention as possible. I drove around a bit to get it up to operating temperature while getting to the major route with the big hill. It may have been my imagination, but the smoke appeared to be clearing up slowly. Getting to the bottom of the hill I mashed the fuel pedal and let the engine go full out. Halfway up the hill I looked back to see a big smoky pall at the bottom of the hill.

The performance was somewhat disappointing. For some reason my impression was that it should have done better, but I'm probably comparing it to level ground performance. I had to back out of the fuel pedal near the top of the hill as I was approaching what may be referred to as dangerous driving. At this point, the smoke had mostly cleared. I kept driving around for about 40 km occasionally matting the fuel pedal. By the time I got home, the smoke situation was back to normal. The biodiesel and aggressive driving appears to have helped.

I think I'll be using a 50/50 WMO/diesel mix from now on.

 

[Kevin 007]

I have aspirations of eventually farming my own algae for biodiesel. Even designed up the
reactor. Maybe some day.

Do you mind sharing the reactor design?

 

[Runningaford]

I'm curious about using the regular unleaded, and the ethanol additive that's tearing up gasser engines... Is that a concern for you guys having that in your engines? From what I've read, and heard from mechanics, the ethanol is denatured, and has a denaturing agent in it; which in turn ends up screwing stuff up.

 

[laserjock]

Do you mind sharing the reactor design?

It will be a closed system. Probably vertical clear PVC tubes to save space and maximize light penetration. I've made sketches but I've never actually built anything yet. Started to a couple years ago but then I bought a truck to restore. [emoji15]

Look up vertical photo bioreactor and you'll get the idea.

The cool thing about algae is you press the oil out and then what's left is basically cellulose which can be burned too.

I don't know if I'd ever make enough to fuel the truck on a regular basis but I was hoping for enough to heat the garage over the winter at hobby scale.

 

[laserjock]

I'm curious about using the regular unleaded, and the ethanol additive that's tearing up gasser engines... Is that a concern for you guys having that in your engines? From what I've read, and heard from mechanics, the ethanol is denatured, and has a denaturing agent in it; which in turn ends up screwing stuff up.

This is interesting. I haven't done extensive reading on this but typically ethanol is denatured by adding a little bit of something to it that makes it not for human consumption. For high purity ethanol, typically benzene is added to azeotrope the water out so the ethanol will fractionate from the water in the distillation. Usually once this is done the ethanol is considered denatured the benzene has been added and can be carried over and you don't want to drink benzene so it's considered denatured.

The act of putting the ethanol into the gasoline denatures it too.

So in the end, it doesn't make sense to me to have any additives to denature the ethanol when once it's in the fuel its automatically denatured. I suppose they could denature for purposes of transport before blending.

Anyway, long story short, I would not be too worried about having ethanol in the system so long as you have plenty of lubricant in your fuel. Ethanol itself can be ******* rubber parts if you don't use the right materials. The return system could be a problem. The problem is that as good as viton is for most things, it's actually marginal for ethanol.

If you look at it this way, RUG contains up to 10% ethanol around here. If you are mixing 10% RUG in your mixture, that's got about 1% ethanol content. That's dilute enough that the effects should be minimal on the rubber parts. Better without it of course, but I would expect a lot of miles before it would actually cause a problem at those levels especially if you are purging with D2 on shutdown.

Hope something in that ramble was useful.