Hot water boiler with veggie oil

Discussion in 'Off Grid Living' started by jmore99, Aug 26, 2010.


  1. jmore99

    jmore99 Monkey+

    When i was in the military i was stationed in Alaska and we used 2 oil fired boilers for heat and hot water.

    They ran off #2 diesel fuel. Now i would like to figure out how to get a diesel fired boiler running off veggie oil.

    If for some reason no oil is delivered a person could just switch to veggie oil and still have heat.
     
  2. bnmb

    bnmb On Hiatus Banned

    Why not...If tanks and armored vehicles can run on veggie oil, why not heaters...We didn't do anything to the oil...we just poured it in the tanks...you could try mixing veggie with some diesel, like 50-50 and then slowly increase veggie content...trial runs...
    The only difference we saw was that veggie oil was fuming much more...exhaust fumes were thick and black...
     
  3. Seawolf1090

    Seawolf1090 Retired Curmudgeonly IT Monkey Founding Member

    The used Veggie Oil needs to be well-filtered - lots of impurities in there. Probably would solidify badly in cold weather. But I remember reading an article in the old now-defunct American Survival Guide magazine of a couple ladies who drove a veggie-oil fueled diesel pickup truck coast-to-coast here in the US back in the early 90's. They'd get used oil from restaurants and filter it, then fuel up! A heater or stove should be less picky about fuel quality though.
     
  4. bnmb

    bnmb On Hiatus Banned

    Very possible...although we only used new veggie oil...but if filtered well used could also do the job...
     
  5. CRC

    CRC Survivor of Tidal Waves | RIP 7-24-2015 Moderator Emeritus Founding Member


    Jimmy Buffett drives one now...."The Green Tomato"..you can see it on the East Coast anytime he's not on tour, near a Surfing spot near you.....:) (The White one is used on the West Coast...Green on the East Coast...)

    Buffett’s food-centric epiphany came from a green tomato. Actually, the Green Tomato, his giant green surf van converted to run on used cooking oil, a process that is actually relatively simple compared with using biodiesel. The van is hard to miss, and driving around the United States in search of swells, Buffett found himself acting like an ambassador for the grease engine movement. “I felt like a teacher because I was giving lectures everywhere I went about the benefits of burning grease,” he says.

    Along with the usual suspects—surf bums and eco-hippies—commercial fishermen were anxious to hear his pitch. “These guys are always being screwed by the high cost of diesel,” Buffett says. And among fishermen, no one is more familiar with being screwed by high fuel costs and measly returns than the American shrimper. While shrimp prices have declined due to the flood of farmed shrimp onto the market, most of it imported from Asia, the same cannot be said for fuel.


    Buffett Hopes to Help Southern Shrimpers | Jimmy Buffett World
     
  6. Falcon15

    Falcon15 Falco Peregrinus

    A diesel engine can run on straight unused "pure", or filtered used cooking oil. No modifications outside of possibly adding a heat unit for the fuel tank to prevent gelling of the oil at low temps. Rudolph Diesel designed the original diesel engine to run on peanut oil. The Mythbusters did a show on whether or not a diesel engine would run on filtered used cooking oil (it did, quite well actually). With no difference in the emissions. There are plans for an inexpensive "waste oil" heater here.

    Wrap the waste oil heater with copper tubing, run water through the copper tube, and the waste oil heater is doing double duty (basically 2x the work for the same fuel just to heat your space). Use a solar powered (or electric) water pumping system with a pressure activated valve, and run the water from the source (cold) through the coils to the storage (a hot water heater, well insulated without elements). The storage tank can be hooked to the supply for the house/BOL/cabin. Turn on the hot water tap, the pressure in the tank/supply system drops, the cold water pump starts moving water through the coils, and you have a hot water heating system.
     
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