waste oil in a OWB ... ideas??

[bassman]

I am happy with my 12 to 16 hour burn times but I also have a free supply of deep fryer and motor oil.
I have simply dumped a can in the fire and watched my temp go up and it use no wood so I am thinking of ways to use this free fuel without spending thousands on a waste oil burner .
I was thinking of a copper coil in the back end of the boiler with the nozzle pointed to the front where the blower fan is .
I would then fill a tube that was housed in the chiminy with a hand pump and then run a solinoid and a valve on the flow so it would only drip when it calls for heat and if the firebox is out of wood I am only dumping in a tube full of oil not a 500 gallon tank.
any of you do this ??
I see no smoke when I drip oil on hot coals just alot of fire .

shayne

 

[WidowMaker]

You might find some ideals here.

http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel_library/ethanol_motherearth/me4.html



WidowMaker

 

[Al Smith]

Well,back in the 30's my grandfather had a commercial garage in Pittsburg Pa.He heated the thing with whatever he could stuff through the door of a big old gravity furnace,wood,slack coal,old tires,you name it.

He also had a drip sytem that dribbled used oil,by way of a valve onto the fire.From what my dad used to say,it worked well.Just a small barrel full of oil suspended from the ceiling,a length of tubing and a gas cock valve.More dribble,more heat,to a point.

 

[cunrya]

Gravity drip would probably work. You'd also need to install some sort of shut off silinoid (spelling) tied in with your thermostat. Check out farm supply catalogs for the necessary hardware. I doubt it would have to be specifically for oil.

 

[ericjeeper]

A local farmer

Has a 275 gallon wood stove in his shop. He has a barrel above it.. he drips used motor oil onto old hydraulic filters and such. Burns some wood.. but uses the filters as his media to get the oil to burn.
Yes you would need some sort of control to turn it off.

 

[habanero]

A few years ago I built several variations of vegetable oil fired furnaces and found I was never satisfied with gravity flow. The viscosity of it changes so much with temperature that unless the tank is a long ways from the burner itself, I could never get a constant flow from my valve(s). Petroleum oils would probably work better in that regard, but I still don't think it'd be a "set it and forget it" type of thing.

The best design I found for an oil fired furnace was based on the "turk burner" concept (google it for more info). I used a float valve to control the level of oil in the burner and it worked great. Still wouldn't have wanted to leave it unattended for hours and hours, but it was relatively reliable. I had the most trouble with getting a clean efficient burn, but eventually got that handled. I still use a variation of a turk burner as a quick and simple forge to heat stuff I want to bend.

 

[blackdoggy]

Why wouldn't you just mount the drip in front of the blower so it blows the droplets into the fire instead of on top of it?

 

[RaisedByWolves]

Im hearing stuff that makes me think of brain cancer and dementia.



Used oil has lots of nasty stuff in it including mercury, lead and other heavy metals.


http://www.hcdoes.org/sw/recycle_motoroil.htm


Frier oil seems the better idea.

.

 

[stonykill]

Im hearing stuff that makes me think of brain cancer and dementia.



Used oil has lots of nasty stuff in it including mercury, lead and other heavy metals.


http://www.hcdoes.org/sw/recycle_motoroil.htm


Frier oil seems the better idea.

.

my thought exactly. I am a firm beleiver in wood only in the owb. The antis hate these things enough without someone burning motor oil in the owb, getting turned into the local town, and having yet another town or city ban these things.
Save the frier oil for a diesel generator, recycle the waste motor oil, and cut some wood for the boiler.

 

[Al Smith]

I've got three friends that have actual waste oil burners and they work real well. One owns a trucking company and uses the crankcase oil from about 30 trucks.One owns a welding shop and the other has a 60 by 96 foot shop with about 400 thousand bucks worth of custom cars in it.

Oh,interestingly,the guy with the trucking company also uses a heated water loop in his office are for heat .That source of heat is by way of a large gas fired water heater and a recirc pump.You might find it amazing but that concept was first discussed at a bar at about 1 AM in the morning,yours truely in on the conversation maybe 20 years ago.

Now as to the carthenigenic concerns on waste oil,where is the documentation as to pros and cons of using same as a source of heat?

 

[habanero]

I have absolutely no proof to back up this statement, but I bet a guy running a chainsaw one day a week for a year is exposed to 10 times the carcinogens that same guy would be exposed to burning waste motor oil for heat. Think about all the gasoline you're exposed to, the 2-cycle oil, particulate matter, etc.

But that being said, I also disagree with burning waste oil without regard to proper combustion parameters to reduce emissions. The oil burners I built put out a fraction of the smoke that most OWB's put out. The only smoke you'd see at all was for a minute or so before it got up to temperature, then the exhaust was clear as a bell.

 

[Cannery]

Im hearing stuff that makes me think of brain cancer and dementia.



Used oil has lots of nasty stuff in it including mercury, lead and other heavy metals.


http://www.hcdoes.org/sw/recycle_motoroil.htm


Frier oil seems the better idea.

.

My problem with burning the frier oil is the whole neighborhood smells like tater tots and it makes me hungry. I can't go outside with out salt and ketchup.

I have to go cut more firewood! :hmm3grin2orange:

 

[bassman]

just a little more info.

I live out of town and have no close neibors.
It is an OUTdoor boiler so no worry about burning the house down.
keep the info coming .

shayne

 

[stipton]

Why not just have your bucket of oil beside your owb door and have several split pieces of wood sitting in the bucket, soaking up the oil, replacing when needed. A good dried piece will soak up the oil like a sponge I would think....

 

[habanero]

Why not just have your bucket of oil beside your owb door and have several split pieces of wood sitting in the bucket, soaking up the oil, replacing when needed. A good dried piece will soak up the oil like a sponge I would think....

The problem with what you suggest is when you throw the piece of wood in the fire, the oil will quickly boil out of the log (very much like water out the end of a wet piece of wood). This oil vaporizes and combusts so quickly that you end up with not enough oxygen in the firebox and that creates smoke.

 

[roaddog]

I built a homemade waste oil burner for a friend of mine which was used in his 40x80 shop. Gravity feed worked okay, but the oil he had, hydraulic and motor oil, was too viscous to get a great burn. I took a small street 90 and drilled a hole in the back of it, then ran another tube into that; basically a redneck venturi. We hooked an airline to the 90, and gravity fed the oil into the tube. After testing and fine tuning the dimensions and placement of the tube for proper atomization we got it right . He'd fire it in the morning, and depending on how much oil he ran to it, he could have the shop so hot he'd have to open the doors within an hour. You could start it on newspaper, but normally he'd use wood. It worked very well.

 

[Al Smith]

Burning waste oil has been around since there has been waste oil to burn.The old drip systems have been used most likely since the 20's and work just fine after you figure out how to use them.

However before you trot right out and buy or build one,you have to have a supply of oil.Those three people I had mentioned have nearly an unlimited supply at their disposaly but this may not hold true for all interested.

In my own little life I serious doubt that I generate 20 or so gallons of recoverable oil in the course of a year and it takes a lot more than that .My friend with the fortune worth of custom cars has storage for several thousand gallons.

 

[beerman6]

My problem with burning the frier oil is the whole neighborhood smells like tater tots and it makes me hungry. I can't go outside with out salt and ketchup.

I have to go cut more firewood! :hmm3grin2orange:

Thats funny right there...

 

[Mr. Obvious]

I've used the drip system myself. I picked up a free double door Wood Boss wood stove and put it in my small woodshop. I drilled a small hole above the front doors and ran in a small copper line from a supply tank with a needle valve.

Works pretty good and the main benefit is the wood lasts much longer if you drip in the oil. It does have a noticeable odor to it though and makes a blue smoke.

The biggest problem with the copper drip tube above the fire is it gets crusted up inside with burnt oil and eventually gets clogged and needs to be cleaned or replaced.

Also as mentioned: as the fire (wood) dies out and the oil keeps dripping it cruds up the bottom of the stove. The oil by itself in a drip system won't keep a hot fire going. A selonoid valve with a temp. probe on the stove would fix that.

 

[bassman]

Tonight I found out that motor oil vs fryer oil dripping into the hot coals in front of the blower are 2 tottaly different animals....
motor oil is way hotter and no smoke where the fryer oils burns but smokes and can be noticed in the air by the smell.
again this complete combustion can only happen for a couple of hours or will require raking of the coals into a proper pile for this to all work.
at this time I am only making a hotter fire that lasts longer more than I am getting a waste oil burner.
I am going to try a pot with a mix of steele screen and maybe steel wool in place of the coals but I am sure that it will work good untill my boiler gets to 180 and shuts down and the startup will not do its self and I will then endup with a ashpan full of oil.. and no fire.
I think a can set on top of a burning log with a small hole in it to drip oil on the fire is where I am at and have perfected...