Anyone heard of making our own diesel from used oi
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Topic: Anyone heard of making our own diesel from used oi
Posted By: Darwin W. Kurtz
Subject: Anyone heard of making our own diesel from used oi
Date Posted: 24 Sep 2023 at 10:05am
| Someone told me they know a guy that is doing it......wonder how they do it |
Replies:
Posted By: DMiller
Date Posted: 24 Sep 2023 at 11:47am
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Waste oil, to be specific does not burn well even clean or freshly cleaned unless atomized, has to be mixed with a flammable agent or presented to Hot Fire. Injection Systems do not do well with higher viscosity lube oils. Waste Cooking oils can be refined to remove the solids that precipitate out in colder weather but have to find a way to discard these refining process wastes, buddy of mine did this for three years, had so much Lye Soap that could not get rid of and trash would not accept in any volume. He stopped the cooking oil collection as that has also become a industry much as scrap metals and priced him out.
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Posted By: Tbone95
Date Posted: 24 Sep 2023 at 12:25pm
| A coworker of mine messed around with this for several years. He bought an old Mercedes to do it with. I forget which is which but direct or indirect injection makes a difference and Mercedes had the better option. He tried a lot of different things, he’s an extremely crafty and knowledgeable guy. He ended with waste oil ( machine lube and grinding oil) and I’m pretty sure he usually cut it with acetone, but successfully also used gasoline and…? Ya, something! Been a while. He never did any fuel system or engine damage, just the rest of the car was falling apart around him as it was old when he got it. |
Posted By: DMiller
Date Posted: 24 Sep 2023 at 2:54pm
| Were a couple with old Mercedes that this worked on, only engine other than the Multifuel in 2 and half tons in US Military made to do that IIRC were White, Hercules and Continental manufactured. Those did however have mixing rates but as with those older Mercedes, smoked worse than any house fire while power was notably limited. |
Posted By: steve(ill)
Date Posted: 24 Sep 2023 at 4:08pm
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coworker had a Mercedes about 20 years ago that he ran on vegetable oil.. Got it from local restaurants.. They had to PAY people to haul it off, so he took it for FREE and was a benefit to both.... The had an electric heater under the back seat and ran the veggie thru it to warm it up so it would pump and burn in the winter.. Did it for several yeas.. Dont know if he still does it, that was YEARS ago. You could SMELL it coming a block away... Riding in it made you Hungry for french fries !! Seem to work very well.. ------------- Like them all, but love the "B"s. |
Posted By: steve(ill)
Date Posted: 24 Sep 2023 at 4:10pm
30 years ago we had some fuel pump problems on big crawlers... Looked into it and the fuel supplier was putting 10% used engine oil into the diesel... The OIL was fine, but the METAL CONTAMINANTS were not good for the fuel system !!  ------------- Like them all, but love the "B"s. |
Posted By: Walker
Date Posted: 24 Sep 2023 at 4:29pm
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Google knows many things. |
Posted By: Ray54
Date Posted: 24 Sep 2023 at 4:45pm
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The burning of cooking oil was going to be a big do it yourself thing when it first started. Was easy to get for a time, then bigger players started paying for it. Had a friend that got in at the beginning. I don't think he ever processed any, or not much. A bigger player bought what he had a option to pick up from the restaurants he had agreement with.They paid in processed oil ready to burn. Being in Calif it did not need heating in winter. But something about cooking oil loosened all the sludge in fuel tanks and lines. The first several tanks full in every piece of equipment took multiple fuel filter changes to keep running. Once junk was out he did Ok with it. Farm Show magazine had many articles and recipes on how to do it. With a search of their site you could find how to process it.
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Posted By: Lars(wi)
Date Posted: 24 Sep 2023 at 5:20pm
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Years ago, maybe early to mid 1980’s Wisconsin State Journal ran a series of articles about a guy that was also getting used cooking oil from fast food restaurants, filtered and running in a couple of Volkswagen diesel sedans. A month or so, after the final article in the newspaper was published, the Wisconsin State Department of Revenue dropped the hammer on the guy, came down on him like a ton of bricks. Couple weekends of stories once again in the Wisconsin State Journal, on how the revenue dept. was planning on prosecuting the guy big time. Fined him tens of thousands of dollars(if memory serves), confiscated all his equipment, threatening jail time, etc., they hit him hard. ------------- I tried to follow the science, but it was not there. I then followed the money, and that’s where I found the science. |
Posted By: DMiller
Date Posted: 25 Sep 2023 at 4:38am
| Have to watch for bio diesel signs on pumps with my old Ford. Seems the plastic fuel lines do not handle that very well, corrupt from the inside and break down initially leak then fully fail. States as such in owners manual. |
Posted By: Tbone95
Date Posted: 25 Sep 2023 at 7:26am
| My coworker did the waste fry oil thing too, worked but more fuss than the waste oil from work. Yeah the Mercedes is gone, but he still runs an Isuzu powered generator with the waste oil. It’s a unit he bought used out of a refer application. He’d run it more, but he lives in a sort of crowded sub on a lake and people would complain about the smell. |
Posted By: DonDittmar
Date Posted: 25 Sep 2023 at 10:22am
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Interesting to note that back in the day Cummins actually had a system to burn used oil in their engines. It was called Centinal and you could purchase the system when you bought a new truck. There was a tank on the firewall you filled with CLEAN engine oil. After so many miles, the engine ECM would pump a small amount of used oil out of the pan and cycle it into the fuel stream. It would then pump clean oil out of the tank on the firewall and pump it into the pan. All you had to do was keep that tank topped off. The benefits were 2 fold. 1), obvious fuel savings as you were burning some motor oil and 2), they allowed for extended oil change intervals because a portion of the engine oil was constantly being replaced. This was in the early 2000's Can you imagine what the EPA would think of this system now lol??? I wonder of used oil mixes with def??? ------------- Experience is a fancy name for past mistakes. "Great moments are born from great opportunity" 1968 D15D,1962 D19D Also 1965 Cub Loboy and 1958 JD 720 Diesel Pony Start |
Posted By: Ray54
Date Posted: 25 Sep 2023 at 10:32am
The lake people to snooty to like the smell of French fries? At least that is what I smelled from the neighbor's place. Your running a generator comment has reminded me. A guy in Oregon spent a lot of effort modifying a Cat D2 engine powered generator to burn unprocessed cooking oil. Just filtered multiple times and heated, I think. The antique Cat guys helped with adjustments to the injector pump to make power with it. Shameless don't you be getting any ideas.  i |
Tbone95 wrote:Posted By: Tbone95
Date Posted: 25 Sep 2023 at 11:34am
| Nah ray he’s running the waste machine oil. |
Posted By: Lars(wi)
Date Posted: 25 Sep 2023 at 3:46pm
I worked for a trucking company that had that exact system(for a few years), most of the engines crapped out at 650,000-700,000 miles. Top end of engines totally shot. Most engines were so far out of mfg parameters the ecm would kill the fuel flow going down the highway, some others the camshaft would fail, etc. ------------- I tried to follow the science, but it was not there. I then followed the money, and that’s where I found the science. |
Posted By: modirt
Date Posted: 26 Sep 2023 at 3:10am
If what you are talking about is making bio-diesel, it is made from some type of animal fat or vegetable oil (cooking oil), lye and methanol alcohol. It can be made at home on your kitchen counter with a plastic bottle of cooking oil, Drano (lye) crystals and a bottle or two of Heet from the auto parts store. The cooking oil is then split between biodiesel and glycerin. It is a simple chemical reaction that can be done at room temperature. As a fuel, it is actually better substitute for diesel than ethanol is for gasoline, and there were a number of bio-diesel plants built, but if memory serves, the problem was there wasn't a cheap or free surplus of enough oils around to make these viable. It cost you more to make it than it was worth. Most of the bio-diesel plants either never got going or shut down quickly if they did. But if you have the surplus oil, you can make a liquid, transportable fuel that will get you up and down the road.
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Posted By: Coke-in-MN
Date Posted: 28 Sep 2023 at 2:55pm
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Son was doing it far a while , then the supply of fryer oil became a problem of obtaining . Next was when DOT started checking tanks on trucks and wanted fuel receipts as was checking on paid ROAD TAX - Had them want to audit my records but at the time I had no diesel trucks and when I mentioned I only used on road fuel in equipment and they could stick tanks on any diesel equipment - seems they lost interest in checking for off road fuel - in on road vehicles . Some years back the bleed and feed oil change systems were being sold but now with catalyst converters any oil added will create ash and plug units quickly . ------------- Life lesson: If you’re being chased by a lion, you’re on a horse, to the left of you is a giraffe and on the right is a unicorn, what do you do? You stop drinking and get off the carousel. |