Micro CoGen.

Quote from: billswan on February 22, 2015, 01:03:50 PM
cujet

I don't post much anymore but do try to read at least some of what is posted and this thread sure brings back memories. Went back and reread the first few posts and noticed that was when spencer was still posting. He sure was adamant with the fact as he seen it that WMO was a better fuel for waste oil fired heaters than diesel engines. And I see it about the same way. I sure won't argue like he did but he was right at least in slow speed lister like engines.

Not sure why some engines seem to tolerate WMO better but lister-oids sure don't. At least not the ones that are pushed to the limit. as I did with both of my single's.

I will say that  posters like rbodell do seem to have better luck but he was treating his oil to reduce acid as best as i can remember and after seeing a video of his engine running I will say it was running at a lower power out put level. I am thinking that is causing his better results.

MY ENGINE RUNS AT FULL POWER WHEN GENERATING ELECTRICITY OR IT WOULD NOT PRODUCE ADEQUATE POWER. I DO RUN IT SLOWER WHEN JUST CHARGING BATTERIES

Now back to my experience with burning wmo in my boiler that heats my farm shop. I go through about 1400 gallons a year and I can attest to the fact that there is sure a lot of ash in 1400 gallons. I remember the post that spencer put up showing the bucket fulls he pulled out of his boiler, it works the same for me on this side of the pond.

I CAN NOT "SPECULATE" ON HEATING WITH WMO, I HAVE NOT DONE IT AND IT HAS NO CONNECTION TO RUNNING AN ENGINE ON IT.

I will speculate that if a car type of diesel was run on a high % of wmo and was driven casually it might work. But take the same engine bolt a gen head to it and push it to 80 to 90 % full out put it might suffer the same fate as the single's I spoke of above.

WHEN PEOPLE "SPECULATED" WITHOUT ACTUALLY RUNNING IT ON WMO, THEY SAID I WOULD RUIN MY ENGINE. AFTER ABOUT 8 OR 9 YEARS WHEN I PULL THE HEAD EVERYTHING HAS FACTORY SPECS. THE FUEL SYSTEM HAS HAD WMO IN IT FOR THE SAME LENGTH OF TIME. IT WORKS PERFECTLY.
THE ONLY THING DIFFERENT IS THAT YOU DO NOT HAVE TO REMOVE THE HEAD AND SCRAPE THE CARBON OFF THE PISTON AS RECOMMENDED BY THE MANUFACTURER. IT NOT ONLY DOES NOT FORM, BUT THE CARBON IN THE WMO (WHICH MAKES IT BLACK) IS ALSO BURNED.

DURING MY RESEARCH I CAME ACROSS A GUY THAT WAS RUNNING A GM 671 DIESEL TRUCK ENGINE ON WMO FOR OVER 30 YEARS. IN THE BEGINNING, HE DID NOT TREAT THE WMO OTHER THAN A RAG FILTER AND THE PH CAUSED DAMAGE TO THE INJECTORS AND HIGH PRESSURE PUMP AFTER ABOUT A YEAR. ONCE HE TREATED THE PH HE HAD NO MORE PROBLEM WITH THE INJECTOR PUMP AND INJECTORS.

I WON'T BE "SPECULATING" ABOUT RUNNING IT IN A VEHICLE EITHER, AS SOON AS I GET MOVED TO ALASKA, I WILL BE GETTING A DIESEL VEHICLE AND TRYING IT MYSELF.

WHEN THE "SPECULATORS" SAID I COULDN'T RUN AN ENGINE ON WMO I PAID 3,000 DOLLARS FOR AN ENGINE TO FIND OUT WHY. NOW WHEN "SPECULATORS" SAY I WILL RUIN A CAR ENGINE WITH WMO, I WILL BE SPENDING ANOTHER COUPLE THOUSAND DOLLARS FOR A DIESEL VEHICLE TO FIND OUT WHY. UNLIKE THE "SPECULATORS", I WILL KNOW WHY.

But as others have argued they have had better results..................

Billswan

Quote from: buickanddeere on September 13, 2013, 05:38:32 PM
Depends on how fine the fuel is mechanically filtered. How much ash there is in the WMO? Hot hot the engine is operated at? Type of lube oil and how filtered it is. How efficient is the air filter?  Is th engine operating at 85% power or 101% power?

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All that stuff makes little or no difference other than filtering. You forgot to mention the PH and moisture which I treat the waste oil for too.

After 7 years and several thousand hours of running on a brand new engine I purchased just for this project while feeding it anything that remotely resembled oil including burnt transmission oil, stale gasoline and stale diesel fuel, crude oil, hydraulic oil, paint thinner, kerosene, and some stuff that you had to look twice to for it to even look close to oil. I have run it at running speed down to 300 rpm. It actually looks better inside than you would expect running on diesel fuel. The manufacturer recommends removing the head every 700 hours to scrape the carbon off the piston. No carbon collects on the piston running on waste oil. I run straight 30 wt in the summer and 5w30 in the winter so I can still hand crank it. It still has the original injectors and injector pump it came from the factory with. In fact it also has the original 10 micron fuel filter in it. The only thing I do is run it through a centrifuge, remove moisture and bring the PH down to neutral.

Quote from: veggie on October 11, 2011, 01:55:46 PM
Hi All,

Sketching up a drum muffler and thought I would get some input from the group.
Below is a picture of the proposed muffler.

That is quite similar to mine except mine is a 30 gallon drum inside a 55 gallon drum surrounded by dirt and partially buried in the ground.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1ZJ8e3ihZg&list=UU_PjvlnZ0JNaqB73NZ2kiLQ&index=10

I removed the exhaust so you can hear it. It is 10 feet long and you probably couldn't hear it at all with it. The exhaust on the outlet side is PVC so that is how much it cools the exhaust. You can see it laying against the shed. You can see the wall of my house just barely peeking out beyond the shed in the right, The shd is just outside my bedroom and you can't hear it at all.

Quote from: Chris on March 14, 2010, 01:40:20 PM
I live off grid. I have a land line with dsl about 3 miles down the shore, at neighbours house. Access point with a grid type directional antenna pointed to my house with a similar grid directional antenna pointed to the access point. A wireless bridge at my end, hooked up to a router for my computers. I have line of site between the two sites. Also a ALCON remote phone for the land line (Phone). The ALCON has been giving problems. I think bad antennas. (Salty air). Internet works great as long as the DSL is up.
Vonage and or Magic Jack internet phones work reasonably well most times. The land line service is government owned and goes down all the time. Phone workers don't care too much. They gota job, but don't work too hard. My system is probably illegal. The phone guys don't mind cause they can't provide me with direct land line service.  I don't complain too much cause they will probably shut me down if I do. Hey it's better in the Bahamas.

Chris

I was concerned when my ISP installed my DSL since I do not pay for a landline phone service. I asked what would happen if there was a problem with the line and they said the phone company would fix it. Of course I am not in the Bahamas but I imagine things work the same there.

Quote from: millman56 on May 08, 2013, 05:13:23 PM
Has anyone out there tried running an air cooled engine on oil ?  My experience with 5 different engines, viz,  Petter AC1, Ruston 2YWA, Lister SR1, Armstrong Siddeley AS1 and Lister VA    was less than ideal,  all the engines ran perfectly initially then performance dropped off accompanied by white smoking and overheating,  the exhaust valves stuck  in their guides, possibly due to high exhaust temps  drying them out and coking the lube oil.           Tried water misting down the inlets of both the SR1 and 2YWA with no noticeable effect.     When refuelled with diesel  the engines ran fine. 
Mark.

That is interesting that all those engines should have the same symptoms. Can I assume they are all air cooled? Maybe Air cooling is not as efficient as water cooling. I can see where higher temperatures might happen since WMO burns better than diesel and that water cooling could have the capacity to take away more excess heat although it just doesn't seem that the small difference in flame speed of diesel would be enough to make that much difference in heat buildup. Mine actually had less smoke and more power.

I am told that the older VW diesels recommend a mixture of wmo and diesel to improve mileage. I don't think they are air cooled though. maybe if you experimented with different mixtures of wmo and diesel to see just how much oil it takes for these symptoms to take place. You still might be able to use 50% or more WMO. I would be interested in the results.

It has been 6 or 7 years now since I started on my WMO as fuel experiment. Other than dying before my roid does, I think I have gone as far as I can go on this project. For the last couple of years I have been toying with a WMO fueled vehicle. The other day a fellow I met wanted to see my setup. As soon as he saw it, he wanted it. I told him I was more interested in at least a partial trade than outright sale. Well, it just so happens he has a VW diesel pickup truck. It needs a head which he has and he is going to get it all back together to work out some kind of a deal.

The thing I really liked about this vehicle is that in the original paperwork he has with it, VW recommends mixing WMO with diesel fuel to improve the fuel mileage which is already 50 to 60 MPG on diesel. It is just a matter of how much I can mix with it, I am hoping to get as close to 100% as I can. Even if 100% does decrease the mileage, if the fuel is free, who cares what kind of mileage I get as long as the engine runs good. I don't really know what my 6/1 listeroid runs on diesel since it never had any in it other than a few cups full for initial startup, but it ran about 6 hours on a gallon of WMO. It really didn't make much difference whether it was running at 300 or 650 RPM. If anybody out there ever keeps track of fuel consumption on diesel in a 6/1, I would like to hear what it was.

At the moment we are still negotiating, but I don't see why we can't work out something that works for both of us. he has lots of nice toys like a 300 gallon stainless steel fuel tank and he can work with anything from cash to total trade. I consider it having paid for itself by showing me that WMO as fuel is totally workable.

Just like with the Listeroid, I am sure there will be plenty of people who will come up with no end to negativity as to why this won't work and just like the Listeroid, I won't pay much attention to it. I spent almost $4,000 on a new engine just to see if all the nay-sayers were right or wrong. In the end though I will be able to say it works and here is the vehicle or it doesn't work and here are the broken parts. I do expect some problems when it comes to a later model vehicle with a computer running everything, but them again, if it does happen I will have all the data to show it. I don't quote other people because I don't really know where they got their information like the guy who said he ruined his engine running WMO. It turned out he was not processing it properly. I just show MY results and people can take them for what they are worth.

As time goes on, I will update this thread.
Bob

Quote from: BigGreen on January 26, 2011, 08:33:09 PM
Thanks for chiming in rbodell. Spencer has an interesting WMO project in-work and hit a snag from what appears to have been from excessive additive ash. Rather than analysing the data and determine appropriate adjustments he started screaming the sky is falling and posted all over the Lister world that pouring WMO in your tank is like pouring battery acid on your johnson, don't do it and you will be doomed if you do. Some of us started questioning the rationale behind this action and it all went down-hill from there. We were trying to provide possible course's of action to get his project back on track but it was like me talking to our donkey. That 'ol donkey doesn't listen and his mind is made up, he ain't a'moven.

Take care and drop in from time to time.
Dave 

Actually it was all the nay-sayers that convinced me to buy this engine and try it out. Like what was the worst that could happen? buy a set of rings and fuel system rebuild? The best way to get me to do something is to tell me I can't do it LOL. I was more interested in finding out why it wouldn't work other than just because somebody who never did it said it wouldn't work. 

Quote from: sailawayrb on December 16, 2011, 06:42:33 PM
I agree Bob...only an incompetent engineer would conclude that a hummingbird can't fly.  A competent engineer would design and build one:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-12513315

And then he would build a robotic fly with full reconnaissance capability...

Bob B.

Just like I said, as soon as somebody says you can't, somebody does.

Quote from: OFFGriddnPat on October 02, 2011, 09:45:15 AM
Maybe we are talking apples and oranges here folks.

I'm not saying your systems will not work, but you express all of your thoughts on how mine can't, or won't. I'm here to tell you I do, and it does.

I was told by the "Experts" I could not possibly run industry standard 3 phase industrial metal lathes and mills off grid here with a single phase 120VAC. But I do daily. It was stated by an engineer and physicist that the product I have designed could not work and was "all wrong" for the task yet I did, and have taken a good majority of his business.

Everything is doable and relative. Blanket statements do not always fit.

One thing about these groups is that as soon as somebody says you can't, somebody does. Scientists and engineers all agree that a hummingbird can not fly, but they do, and they do it very well. One thing I have learned though in life is that nothing is impossible and the laws of physics are not exact or .

Quote from: BigGreen on December 15, 2011, 08:44:16 PM
Hey Bob
Nice to see you drop in. It's been a while 

Thanks a lot, I got tired of being retired and somebody asked me to give them a hand for a few days. It has been almost a year and I figure I don't owe then anything LOL. Actualy I had a close call the other day. I fell about 8 feet on to some sharp pointed pieces of steel on a garbage truck compactor blade I was welding on. https://picasaweb.google.com/111457583175221109892/November302011#5680913284046383650 It really hurt at the time, but I never got any more than a slight scratch. The ems thought I was impaled on those pieces of steel but no. I have a bad back and didn't even get a back ache. For some reason the fellow upstairs seems to have a reason to keep me around. It did make me think that there must be something better than working so I retired again. Now I have more time.

I run an automotive alternator to charge batteries. The first thing I noticed is that if you run a regulator, after a short time, it drips back to 2 or 3 amps. I switched to a rheostat to operate the alternator at the amperage I want it to put out. With this setup it will stay at whatever amperage I set it at cutting the charging time by many hours. I have 6 - 6 volt deep cycle batteries wired up for 12 volts. I charge it continuously 6 hours a day at 30 amps. The batteries do not even get the slightest increase in temperature at 30 amps. Remember the 30 amps is distributed between all 6 batteries. This would be too much if there was only one or two batteries. I don't have a problem with the batteries running low on water either.

Too much work, just get one of these.

https://picasaweb.google.com/rbodell/Mar62011#5580967802532849714

Quote from: rcavictim on March 05, 2011, 09:45:53 PM
Was going through some early project pictures.  Here is one showing the tower having just basically filled out to final shape.  At this point I was able to get a clear realization that ....I had a hell of a lot more work to do.  Quite.  That was summer 2008.

i got to hand it to ya, That project would have overwhelmed me a long time ago. And to think I have been procrastinating on removing the flywheel from my mower to replace the ring gear.

Quote from: mobile_bob on January 26, 2011, 06:23:35 PM
rbodell

i have said it before, and i will say it again...

you are my friggin hero!

thanks for providing a little balance to the debate.

bob g

hero might be a little far fetched LOL. Always glad to help though. I think the main reason I tried this rout was because there wasn't much info on the net and I wanted to try it out. most of the people I have tracked down don't even use the internet so a lot of it was through snail mail. One fellow only got  into town to the post office every month or two LOL.

I guess it is like wood-gas. A lot of people think it's a fairy tale until they actually do enough research to find out that automobile manufacturers actually built wood-gas cars rite on the assembly line during WW2. Even after my research, I still had visions of it smoking like an old freight train or coal powered factory.

I recently got a couple of power company electric meters from some really nice Guy who just happened by my website. One is going on my lister so I can see what it is making me in dollars and cents. How sweet it is when I think back to when the guy at the power company told me I was going to buy my power from them or nobody ........ BWAAAAHAHAHA.

Well, you all have a good day and those of you who haven't yet ordered your roid, better got to it, you won't regret it.

Quote from: spencer1885 on January 26, 2011, 08:15:16 AM

Quote from: veggie on January 26, 2011, 08:06:49 AM
"Were is Bodell then,is that the only person you can come up with.
1000 hours and then it's gone very quiet."
1] Where is Bodell ??   Don't ask me.... I'm not his mother.
2] Is that all you can come up with?  People of this planet don't report to me when they run WMO.
  Those two examples are what I found with 2 minutes worth of searching. You could find more if you invest a bit of time and research.

Somebody asked me to stop by and comment here.

I now have somewhere near 1700 hours on my engine running 100%WMO. Still haven't found any carbon deposits on the piston.

I still go by the same process for cleaning the oil as I started with on my website at rbodell.com.

I haven't updated my website because nothing has changed, it just keeps on running and running and running and .....

It runs cleaner on WMO than diesel and has more power. In fact I still have the same goldenrod fuel filter on the engine. If it was going to plug up, it would have before this because I do not use a puel pump so that says a lot for the dieselcraft centrifuge filter I use in my processor too.

There are photos of the processor with explanation on the site as well as http://picasaweb.google.com/rbodell/OilPROCESSOR# it the same aS a biodiesel processor as well as the same process exceept I don't add anything to the oil.

As for not finding too many peole who have run WMO, I couldn't find much either so I did a huge anount of research and managed to track bdown a few people who have run WMO in diesels for many years. One fellow has been running a truck on it for over 10 years.I am looking for a diesel pickup to run on it myself. Nothing like free fuel.

I would be glad to help anybody with any information I can, but most everything is on my website. There is contact info on the website, but if it is something new I will probably answer through this website. I haven't visited back here much lately, so if you post something specifically for me here, drop me an email and let me know it is there. rbodell AT gmail.

no I am not an engineer, scientist or even a mechanic. I just did a lot of research bthat told me I had nothing to fear with running this engine on WMO, so I invested $3,000 in the engine and gen head and have had no regrets since. Like I said, I am looking for a truck to run on WMO now.

If anybody living around the weatherford texas area wants to come by and check it out, I would be glad to show you around.