OT---Blending waste and heating oil for use in a boiler

Maybe. :)

I'm near Kansas City, Missouri. I'll be happy to load it on a truck if you want to pay shipping. It's in three 55 gallon barrels. :)

Chuckle!

Maybe I'll wait until the book comes out!

Thanks for your generous offer----but I somehow get the idea I'd be better off buying heating oil locally.

Harold

In the flame area? What did you see beyond? As I said, indications are that I'm actually burning cleaner than with just heating oil. I've cleaned the boiler a few times and found it was not black inside the last time, more of a light gray color as if it wasn't sooting up much. I figure from a little hotter flame, but maybe I'm nuts. No comments, please! :-)

Harold

I'll get most of the heat going into the oil back out of the system anyhow but It's getting insulated, from a safety point if nothing else. It's gotta be in the box, if it developes a leak I don't want boiling hot oil spraying all over the place, Or Me :(.

Also on cold days the oil will warm up faster with the insulation, that means the furnace starts sooner & that means I can start working sooner :).

H.

Harold, actually lubricating oil has a slightly higher BTU rating than #2 furnace oil. If it's burning smokey you should be able to fix that by adjusting the draft on the burner. With used motor oil you really need to filter twice, once with something to keep the crud & used cigarette butts out & then again with a proper furnace filter. Delovan has some good info on filters & oil burner nozzles on thier web site in a downloadable PDF file.

I did most of my research on oils on the net. I'd suggest doing a Google on "oil viscosity chart", theres a few available on the net, one of them talks about the relationship between temp & viscosity. I also bought an "age appropriate" "Audels Oill Burners" book in a used book store, that taught me quite a bit as well.

I'm not sure I fully understand it either :). There was a fella (Frugal Machinist?) who posted on this subject a few years ago, the threads were named "Shop Furness" & "Shop Furness II". He claimed that-

a) Once he had his burner warmed up on regular oil he could switch over to waste oil & it worked fine

& b) I was spelling "furnace" wrong :).

Your welcome. If I do ever get this thing working I'll do a web page up on it & notify here.

H.

Harold,

Using waste oil diluted into your heating oil isn't really a good idea.

1. Residential oil burners are designed to operate a certain viscosity fuel. Obviously waste oil doesnt meet the spec., and will come in varying viscosity depending on the oil received. Therefore your burner will need constant adjustment.

1. Burning waste oil will produce very acidic byproducts (sulphur), which will condense in your chimney as sulphuric acid and destroy the masonry, and eat away the galvanized smokepipe. Plan on installing a stainless liner system.

2. Burning waste oil will cause smoke and soot, you can't see it by looking in the chamber, you need test equipment. If your using even a small mixture I would bet your pulling a #2 or #3 smoke. (Determined by using a smoke tester). Plan on having your boiler vacummed on a regular basis. Another reason is that the nozzle spray pattern (and specific to your boiler/combustion chamber)is designed to be optimal at a certain viscosity and pressure.

1. The waste oil contains heavy sediments that will settle in the bottom of your oil tank making it a gooey sludge pot. In the 275 gallon waste oil tank in my shop the bottom 1/2 is solid crap from the past 10 years of use. Even the waste oil guy won't remove it. Factor in the cost of regular tank cleanings.

2. Plan on changing your filter, pump strainer, and nozzle every few weeks. Plan on early relacement of the fuel pump. Plan on cleaning the cad-cell sensor every month.

1. Plan on becoming a oil burner service tech to become proficient at adjusting the burner settings.

If you think tinkering with the burner at 6am to get the heat & hot water on is worth it,,,,, but I think you'll find a wood pellet stove easier if savings is your goal.

Tony

Thanks for confirming my hunch.

Been through that with heating oil. I paid some dude $125 to set the air/fuel mix using instruments. Damned boiler sooted up within a couple months. I have since set the mixture by eye--and have it where it burns quite clean----requires cleaning only once each year. I can live with that, but I sure as hell miss natural gas, which I'd used all my life. We live where there's no hope of ever having it piped in, although it is available near us. That's one of the prices you pay when you live out in the country. I didn't want to go to propane, not liking the fact that it's heavier than air, and is every bit as expensive as oil, if not higher, when you consider the reduced BTU's per gallon.

That's exactly what I'm doing----and not with chicken wire! The oil is quite clean after it gets through the filter, but it's filtered yet again when it goes through the boiler. So far that hasn't been a problem, but I also ran a small amount of oil last year. This year could spell the difference.

I'll try to find Delovan just as soon as I get this off. I'd like to read anything I can find regards burning waste oil---which I feel is a great idea if one is willing to jump through a few hoops to get around the inherent problems that accompany dirty oil. Mind you, I don't think I'm going to re-invent the wheel here, but I am firmly convinced that it's doable. Thanks for the tip.

Nice find. You must live near a fairly large city. Book stores suffer here----one just went out of business. There's only 60,000 people in the entire county, and it's large. People here are generally red-necks as well, so reading, particularly anything technical, isn't top on their list of priorities. I'll keep the title in mind and see what develops. Fact is, when I get the house finished I'm building, it, too, will be heated by the same boiler, so I'll likely use well over 1,000 gallons/year. It would be nice if I could supplement the system. If the oil doesn't work out, I've already allowed for a supplemental wood burning system that will work in conjunction with the boiler. We have lots of trees that could be burned, but I prefer to not get involved with that idea. It's too much work for an old-timer like me. If I haven't mentioned it, the house and shop are heated hydronically.

If it was Frugal Machinist (Roy), I'm well aware of him. He was on RCM when I first started reading, but was then known as Foxeye, as I recall. We've had an interesting relationship through the years----rarely agreeing on anything. I think he's a decent guy, just a little boneheaded (as if I'm not).

That, so far, isn't an issue. My boiler fires and runs perfectly well with the limited blend I've tried. That's what encouraged me to seek a closer ratio. Could be I can't come anywhere near 50/50, but even if I can add

100 gallons per tank, that saves me about $300. Considering I'm retired, I don't mind the little work involved, and I can sure as hell use the $300 for other things. Stuff for the shop comes to mind!

Right now, off road diesel (#2 heating oil, in other words) costs $2.79/ gallon. Heating oil, delivered, is higher, plus they add sales tax (7.7%). I can save at least $3/gallon if I can get this thing working. Yeah, the prices are high. We're paying considerably more for gas and oil here in the NW than the balance of the country, except maybe Kalifornya.

Chuckle! Yep----that sure sounds like Roy.

If I do ever get this thing working I'll do a web page

Way cool, Howard. * Luck! *

Thanks again,

Harold

How much is vegitable oil in 500 gallon lots?

Gunner

"If I'm going to reach out to the the Democrats then I need a third hand.There's no way I'm letting go of my wallet or my gun while they're around."

"Democrat. In the dictionary it's right after demobilize and right before demode` (out of fashion).

-Buddy Jordan 2001

That was probably a clumsy way for me to describe it. "The flame area" by my tally was everything from the aeration holes to the end of the stack. It burned clean, without smoke, when the intake air louver was adjusted correctly.

The reason I said, "in the flame area" was because we didn't filter the oil, so the tanks collected all sorts of sludge as the oil gently boiled away.

For those who aren't familiar with the old grove pots; they were "pot burner" affairs that allowed a licking fire to burn on top of a pool of fuel. Enough air was allowed in to keep that fire going. The hot fuel would then vaporize and travel up into a cylindrical aeration screen where a separate air supply caused it to burn clean and blue all over the surface of the screen.

The were cheap rolled sheet metal affairs, but would burn all night on ten gallons of whatever oil you had around. If you used heavy oil, the practice was to float about a half-inch of fuel oil on top of the heavy stuff, and ignite that. It would then heat the rest of the smudge pot up to operating temperature.

When the weather got _really_cold_ (like, 27F ), we'd open up the tank air, and close down the burner air. This let a large SMOKY column of fire to emerge from the stack. Some said the smoke helped "hold the heat down" onto the trees. Yeah... welll.....

LLoyd

I used to tip a couple of 200 litre drums of used refrigeration oil into my 10,000 litre fuel tanks at a plant where I once was Chief Engineer . The residual ammonia helped neutralise the sulphur that was in the middle east crude that we usually burned. We heated it to 60degrees C and filtered it before atomising it in a high pressure burner. Never had a problem

"Harold and Susan Vordos" wrote in message news:nuNPg.1006$ snipped-for-privacy@newsreading01.news.tds.net...

Tom Miller wrote in article ...

......that you were AWARE of.

Hi Harold,

If you're really interested in this book, ~35 copies available here in the States starting at around $8 total with shipping. See:

or

These are usually small independent used book stores that use ABE as a listing service. It always is worth looking here if you are looking for an old/new book.

Just make sure that this IS the book Howard was suggesting you look at :)

There are a lot of folks that get waste fry oil from restaurants and after a simple refining process (to remove the glycerin) burn the stuff in their diesel cars, and some run straight veggie oil using petro diesel only when they start up and when they shut down.

Good luck,

If I had enough time to make the setup (convert to biodiesel), I'd address that idea. Right now I have to stay the course with the house project, so using the filtered waste oil seems a reasonable choice. Takes little of my time. Thanks for the thought, though. That could, indeed, be a source for the future.

Harold

Yeah, that's a great project for later, Roger, when I'm finished with my building project. I could use the oil for both of my Dodge trucks, as well as for heating. So much work to do and so little time!

Harold

Thanks, Leon. I'll take a quick look and place an order. I appreciate you taking time to provide the links.

Harold

Given the proper blend, any adjustment could be made once, then the boiler operated for a season. I have a huge oil tank, so I could establish a stable blend. Probably won't be 50/50, if for no other reason, I don't have a source that large.

That's not an issue. The heating oil I've used since day one is high sulfur, but I have a stainless stack and clean it personally. There are no signs of corrosion anywhere in the system after six years of operation, including the firebox of the boiler.

Yeah, I've already been through that, and with straight heating oil. I paid well over $100 to have a local "expert" set the boiler, using his killer expensive instruments. Net result? A sooted boiler in less than three months. I now set by eye----and have established a reasonable level of performance. Do I think my eye is better than proper instruments? Hardly----but I'm getting far better results than I did by paying an unreasonable fee. Fact is, any oil will burn cleanly if provided a proper balance of air----and thus far I am getting, if anything, less in the way of deposits, not more. I attribute that to a slightly hotter flame with a different profile. Probably a result of the slightly thicker (more viscous) oil mix.

I have it set such that I now can run a season without shutting down for cleanup. I can live with a once-a-year cleanup if it saves me a few hundred dollars. As I mentioned, I am retired, living on a modest fixed income, and do the work myself.

That, indeed, is the purpose for my inquiry. So far, my limited experimenting has yielded excellent results. Could be I'll have to stick to just a little supplement, but indications are that that may not be the case.

I'm not sure you and I are doing the same thing. For one, I am filtering the oil well----not running it through chicken wire to remove butts. If I had oil delivered that had been collected from unknown sources, I'd likely agree with you, but in this case I personally see every drop that goes into the tank. After filtration, which goes fairly slow (unattended), it will run through successive filtrations quickly. The spooge seems to be removed totally. The oil is then filtered again through the system when it's used. I've not had to replace a filter aside from routine maintenance.

While I can understand your comments, so far that is not the case. I'll keep a close watch on the boiler when I start running it for signs of any trouble, but at this point I've never had to replace a nozzle, ever. Fact is, the only work I've done on the boiler is to clean the combustion chamber. The pump should be even happier than it was pumping straight heating oil-----after all---I'm pumping lubricating oil, and the average viscosity is changed very little.

I can live with that. I'm a hands on kind of guy and do almost everything myself, anyway. I've learned that hiring people to do things can be a mistake. Setting the boiler when it was put in service is a great example.

Pellet stoves don't solve my problem. I heat hydronically and do not have any intentions of abandoning what was a very expensive heating system that pleases me no end. My first choice was a pellet boiler that used to be made commercially, but was abandoned maybe 8 years ago, likely because of limited demand. I had originally planned to buy one. There were no other sources for such a boiler at that time, and my space is now limited to the boiler in use. I built the room around the boiler, in other words. Converting to a different fuel type is now not an option unless it took less space. A pellet boiler would take more space, based on the size of the one I wanted to buy originally..

Our water is heated by electricity. Unlike most folks, we have cheap power here. We pay 4.4 cents/kwh, and we're expecting a 5% decrease in power costs in the near future, so it's not all that expensive. I wouldn't be pleased to have to run the boiler strictly for hot water for the kitchen and bathroom. It sits idle for about three months each year.

Thanks for your comments, Tony.

Harold

Harold and Susan Vordos wrote in article ...

everything

Tony:

"A person changed against his will, is of the same opinion still..."

As you can see above, some people are simply incapable of accepting reasonably presented, rational counterpoints to their thinking.

Their minds are made up, and God himself could not change them.

They ask for advice, then when it is freely given, they refute it and reject it.

Unfortunately - especially for the innocents around them who might suffer consequences from their decisions - these people must be allowed to go forth and fail.....fail in much the same way several others have pointed out that they WILL fail.

They will then become somewhat muted and humbled by the experience, but they will never, NEVER admit they are/were wrong in their thinking - no matter what it has cost them or their neighbors.

Just the fact that he emphatically states that he has NEVER replaced the burner's nozzle gives you an interesting insight into his "money over maintenance" approach to life.

Gotta' believe THAT nozzle is performing "as new" with its originally designed spray pattern shape and angle, eh?.....

......especially once he starts pumping the grit-infested waste oil - essentially, thinned out, ultra-fine, valve-grinding compound - through the nozzle and close-tolerance pump.

Where does he think that black color comes from in waste oil....Graphite?

No, it is ultra-fine particles of carbon....carbon that WILL wear close-tolerance oil burner components, NOT lubricate them as he erroneously believes.

It is carbon that he will never pre-filter away - unless, of course, he spends a few thousand dollars for a sophisticated filtration system, but that would surely offset his "savings"....wouldn't it?

I burn pure, clean No. 2 fuel oil that is run through the standard fuel oil filter in my shop furnace, and I'm not too cheap to install a new $1.50 nozzle, and a new $2.00 filter each year as inexpensive, preventive maintenance

My oil burner pump is well-lubricated with clean, correct viscosity fuel oil - the very oil that the pump was designed and engineered to work with.

I think whatever is saved by running waste oil through a fuel oil system will be more-than-offset by the negatives in equipment maintenance, repairs, and replacement.......

.......and, there is always the possibility - given the right neighbors - for EPA fines for burning unapproved, potentially carcinogen-bearing waste oils in a residential neighborhood.

For his neighbors' sake, let's hope he doesn't get a "deal" on free, PCB-containing, used transformer oil from his local power company.........

Remember, it is often the frugal man who pays the most.....

Lloyd E. Sponenburgh wrote in article ...

.....yet, they insisted on calling them "smudge" pots.....Go figure!