Who uses Waste engine Oil?

[glort]

My father has a small wrecking yard and as such gets loads of WMO and tranny fluid.
He drains it from all the engines and gearboxes he pulls.
He's been complaining of his ever increasing electricity Bills. This seems like a perfect opportunity to install a small Diesel turning a 3 Phase induction motor back feeding to the grid to help supply some of his power needs and lessen his bill.  He gets quite a lot of oil especially for a small operation and burning it would mean he doesn't have it sitting around and waiting for it to be collected.

I have been using WVO for a long time but my experience with WMO is very limited.

I'm wondering if anyone has used it and in what engines? I have a couple of small aircooled China 178 engines I could set up for the old fella so would be interested in anyones experience with those. He gets a fair amount of petrol from the vehicles as well so blending with ULP would not be a problem either.
I imagine the addition of some tranny fluid would help thin the oil out as well.

Also, are there any simple and basic filtering setups people have had success with?  I'm thinking of something like an open top 44 gallon drum with some layers of cloth over the top and having the prefiltered oil tapped off from above the bottom of the drum going into a fuel filter he gets from the cars he wrecks. No big deal if they had to be changed out every week. Not like there is a shortage or cost involved with them.
Water won't be much of a problem because draining the oil himself he can keep those separated and I don't think he's ever had a car with water in the oil yet anyway.

If I could set up an engine and motor he can run even a few days a week kicking out a couple of kw/h, I think it would be a big offset to his power bill and make use of a waste product I think he has to pay to dispose of now.

[Dualfuel]

Dear Glort,
I burned 100% WMO in an LDS 465 multifuel engine for 10 months, daily. The only issue I had was wet stacking, and that was simply because I only ran the engine at a high idle.
I did a similar thing...prefilter by dumping the oil into a truck airfilter, then filter through a 30 micron pre filter, then 10 micron final filter (or 5 micron, which ever was available).
I also used the mixture you are writing about, in an IH 6.9 idi engine for a couple of seasons....no problems.

[Ronmar]

Lots of conflicting opinions as to how well this will work.  I have not done it personally, so have no long term experience to impart.  As I understand it, the main issue appears to be the additive packages in the oil that contain metals.  These additives do not breakdown under the relatively low combustion temperatures.  Without fully breaking down, they create ash that is supposedly very abrasive and will abrade the upper cylinder and rings.  Some claim wiped out engines in just a few hundred hours of operation, while others like dual fuel have run it for a while without issue. 

Some reference the white ash found in some waste oil boiler burn chambers as evidence of this issue, and I have seen pics and video of this ash.  I myself run a babbington burner I comissioned last winter, and have witnessed no white ash in my burner so far with probably 30 gallons of various types of oil thru it so far.

The issue I see is that there are so many different oils with different additive packages available, it is hard to gauge one persons experience as we do not know their oil's lineage...  It may be the success stories have a source of mainly additive free oil, and the horror stories had a source of oil with high addive contents..  Also in this country a few years back there was a program called cash for clunkers, with all those cars turned in having silica abrasive added to the oil and the engine run till destruction/seizure occured(so they could not be put back on the road ever).  I am thinking any of that waste oil making it into someones fuel supply would not be very healthy for a diesel fuel system.

As for filtering, what I do with my stock is add it to a drum via a standpipe that goes all the way to the bottom of the drum.  The oil then percolates upward while gravity is pulling the solids downward.  The dirtiest oil at the bottom then becomes a filter all in itself with the cleanest oil being found at the top of the barrel.  WVO guys do this with several barrels, the oil comming off the top of one drum passes to the bottom of the next drum and the cleanest oil taken off the top of the last drum. The advantage of the drum is that any water in the oil stays in the bottom of the drum.  the key to the drum is to not move the oil thru it too quickly so it can filter. 

Your typical engine oil filter dosn't really filter down that low.  You will need to filter to a finer level to protect the IP of a diesel.  You could certainly pre-filter with the engine oil filters, but I would run a 10 micron hydraulic filter as a final step.  I don't  filter any more than pouring the oil from the top of the drum thru a fine mesh in the funnel, as the babbington burner dosn't really have a nozzle that the fuel must pass thru.

If I had expendable engines, I might consider it as a generator fuel.  If I didn't, another option would be to use it in a burner to make steam and run a steam engine. At least with a burner, burn quality can be more easilly maintained for a good clean burn.  Besides steam engines are cool:)     

[glort]

I changed the oil in my truck yesterday and decided to give the little china horizontal a run on it to see how it went.
I simply put it through an old fuel filter with a small pump and then just through the inline filter before the engine.  i put about 20% Bio in it when I drained the engine to thin it out.

First impressions were a re confirmation of what I already thought.... It sure is messy black staining shit to deal with!!
Had bio in the engine and I watched the WMO progress down the fuel line and into the filter and apart from a change in exhaust odour, predictably nothing else happened.
The engine seemed to run very well on it and had minimal smoking despite being loaded up with an induction motor as a generator.  The Exhaust -appeared-to be hotter than when I run this engine on bio or WVO but that is just a guess as I have no way of taking temps.

I ran the engine about 4 hours and used about 3-4L of oil and all seemed good. 



Ronmar,

Thanks for the heads up.  It seems to me there is more misinformation on the web about thinks like this from people that parrot fear without any experience and there are also those that do things totally wrong and when it bites them they blame the idea, not the poor methodology they use.  In amongst this the creditable reports get mixed in so it's really hard to sort the wheat from the chaff.

As for abrasive ash, not sure. Veg creates ash and carbon when it is burned yet there are not theories of that wearing the cylinder or rings. Sure there is no added metals in it but one would have to know what they were in the first place and how they did react when burned. One thing that casts some doubt to that theory is that engines burn oil when they run anyway. Sure it's in much lesser qty but over even 10 years, it adds up. 

Also, oil picks up a lot of blow by and combustion products when are then circulated in the oil including ash from combustion. I would think it would not take much of this abrasive substance in the oil where it circulates through the bearings and on the cam etc to wear an engine pretty quick.
I guess the only way to really know about this would be to do specific tests with equipment no one here probably has access to or the time and money  if they did.

I looked into the cash for clunker fiasco and while it seems to be regarded as a success in the US, from the outside looking in with no political Bias, it seemed to be a complete exercise in stupidity with fqr more negative long term consequences than benifits by 100 fold. Thankfully when such a program was mentioned  here in the United States of Australia, it was shot to pieces in the same day.
Pretty much all the cars my father gets are Runners and are tested so there is not going to be anything in the oils that shouldn't be there.

The filter system needs to be dead simple as the old fella is going to be a bit blase about this anyway and to get him to use it, the thing will have to be simple and straightforward to use. I can do maintenance on it when I go there but in between it will have to be pour and go. Yesterdays results were encouraging on that front. The oil filtered easier than I expected.  While the amount I processed was only about 10 L, I also used somewhat pre blocked filters  and only small ones at that. The throughput was quite reasonable and didn't seem to drop off to any from start to finish.

I have used an upflow system like you describe and that is a great suggestion.  I know the idea, have had one and probably would not have thought of it in this application had you not mentioned it. I have never claimed to be too bright! I might set it up on a smaller scale to test the whole thing first and use 20L drums instead of 200's till I see how well the old fella takes to the idea.
The biggest surprise yesterday was when I took notice of the fuel consumption, even running a 1500W load it was so low. I don't think this is going to get rid of as much oil as I thought!

Every car he wrecks of course has a fuel filter and until I recently got him to save these for me, they got thrown out. When up there last week I notice there is already over a dozen good ones there on the shelf and I know that only about half the vehicles he gets have that style I want. The others would be fine for doing oil for a generator. If they will filter fine enough for a fuel injected engine, whatever they pass will be fine for a Diesel as well. They have been for my car for 12 months!

As for engine longevity, I guess thats something I'll have to see.  Replacement parts are cheap enough for these things so doing a set of rings even once a year won't be any big deal.
I was tearing down an engine that broke it's timing belt in an accident last week when up there. As 14 of the 16 valves were bent, we parted the engine for spares.  To my amazement, despite this being a performance Turbo engine with over 400,000 km on it, the thing still had hone marks right through the bores. The old fella and his mechanic said that was the way they all were. They wear rings and bearings these days but the bores stay fine.  With a bit of a rub with some wet and dry paper, I removes the bit of buildup that was above the ring lands in the bore and couldn't detect any lip at all.

They said this is because the engines use steel liners instead of the bore being the casting material of the block. I notice most of the china engines are the same so this makes me think the ring and maybe bearings would go well before the bores themselves. This makes repair more of an R&R job rather than the much more complicated effort of boring and oversize pistons etc.

I think a china horizontal engine would be the one to go for but they are really hard to find here and very expensive when you can. Might be a case of using a vertical I have now and see what happens!

[Tom Reed]

WMO in my Listeroid was not a good thing. It wiped out the cylinder and rings in 150 hours. Carbon deposits formed on the injector tip and messed with the spray pattern and needed to be cleaned every tank full. This oil had settled in a drum for years and been filtered through a 10 micron string wound house water filter.

Burn it to heat a boiler and run a steam generator.

[Ronmar]

Yep, experiences vary.  It most definitely needs to be done in an engine that runs at a high temp, with hot combustion temps.  A listeroid might have issues in this department due to the time between power strokes can cause lower combustion chamber temperatures.  The chinese horizontals do run hotter cylinder-head temps.  IMO that is probably the main reason they turn out such low fuel consumption numbers...

[veggie]

A snippet from the Alternate Fuels Section...
http://www.microcogen.info/index.php?topic=1659.0

One thing that we may want to consider when using alternate fuels is fumigation.
I suspect deposits (and wear caused by deposits) may be reduced greatly if propane or NG fumigation is included in the modification.
IMHO, veggie oil and WMO go hand-in-hand with fumigation.

my $0.02
veggie

[billswan]

+1 for what tom said

I destroyed a 10/1 listeroid on wmo but did get about 1500 hours + out of it.

Then switched to a 16/1 metro listeroid and it was well on the way to destruction before I just gave up on wmo in engines as fuel.

Now just use wmo in a waste oil burner.  just refilled the tank and am using 6 gallon a day to heat a 4000 sq ft shop. 

Billswan

[sailawayrb]

I have never used WMO in my 6/1, but I have used SVO for many years without any issues or even any significant carbon buildup.  I initially used propane for fumigation and also started using natural gas a couple years ago.  I haven't done any exhaustive testing, but I think propane may do a slightly better job preventing carbon buildups than natural gas.  I also preheat the SVO to 240F prior to injection.

Bob B.

[deeiche]

SNIP

Some reference the white ash found in some waste oil boiler burn chambers as evidence of this issue, and I have seen pics and video of this ash.  I myself run a babbington burner I comissioned last winter, and have witnessed no white ash in my burner so far with probably 30 gallons of various types of oil thru it so far.

SNIP

Your typical engine oil filter dosn't really filter down that low.  You will need to filter to a finer level to protect the IP of a diesel.  You could certainly pre-filter with the engine oil filters, but I would run a 10 micron hydraulic filter as a final step.  I don't  filter any more than pouring the oil from the top of the drum thru a fine mesh in the funnel, as the babbington burner dosn't really have a nozzle that the fuel must pass thru.

If I had expendable engines, I might consider it as a generator fuel.  If I didn't, another option would be to use it in a burner to make steam and run a steam engine. At least with a burner, burn quality can be more easilly maintained for a good clean burn.  Besides steam engines are cool:)     

Are you making steam with your babington?  I've always thought a hot air engine or steam engine would be the best use of WMO.  I have Proeschel's hot air engine concept bookmarked for when I get off my ass.

[glort]

If carbon is the issue, I think that can pretty easily be dealt with using water injection. I have used that for years on my vehicles and it does a good job of keeping coking at bay.

I think veggie makes an excellent point in his linked post.
I know that the older vehicles my father wrecks are most likely to have mineral oil in them but the newer ones are all specced for Synthetic.  No way to know which car has what in it other than guess. The performance cars are likely to have synthetic but maybe someone cheaped out and put regular oil in it. OTOH, many of the vehicles he gets looked to be very well maintained before they were in an accident which is why he has them so maybe the owners went the extra way and put synthetic in them?

Trans Fluid seems the better bet but I doubt he gets enough to make the exercise self sustainable.  Less oil in trannys and he does not service them like he does engines with oil changes.

Does anyone have any thoughts on Blending WMO with petrol?  There is no way he would go buy gas to fumigate an engine with but ULP would be a different matter as that is another by product if you like.
I have blended ULP with the WVO I have run in my vehicles since I started on the veg caper 8 years ago and believe in it's benifits with Veg very strongly.
WMO however is something different.  My thoughts are that ULP would help the WMO burn better the same way I believe it works with veg. The ULP lights off easier and sooner than the veg allowing for a more complete combustion process and brings the burning behaviour closer to that of the Dino for which the IP and timing is set up for.

If deposits caused by carbon from incomplete combustion are the main culprit or danger to engines having a short life, Water injection and Blending with ULP would seem to be effective in overcoming this would they not?

[sailawayrb]

I have never tried 6/1 water injection, but I seem to recall that some folks tried this with mixed results.  Propane fumigation accomplishes the same thing since water and carbon dioxide are the products of propane combustion assuming adequate oxygen is available.  So in addition to steam cleaning your 6/1, you can also generate significantly more power by feeding a 6/1 propane.

You only need to drill/tap a hole into your 6/1 air intake, screw in a hose nipple, and then attach it to a pressure regulated propane tank having a flow control valve.  I imagine proper water injection would be more complicated although water is certainly cheaper than propane.

Bob B.

[Ronmar]

Are you making steam with your babington?  I've always thought a hot air engine or steam engine would be the best use of WMO.  I have Proeschel's hot air engine concept bookmarked for when I get off my ass.

No, just hot air for my shop.  I built a 6' heat exchanger tube with fins on inside where the babbington fires, and fins on the outside where outside air is blown in.  Here is a pic, you can't see it but there is a blower on the outside end that blows in fresh air along the outside of the heatex.  It outputs about 300F air at a pretty high volume.  It transforms my 24X24 garage from 30F to 70F in about 15-20 minutes, and blows hot air for about another 10-15 minutes after the burner is shut down.  I put a thermal switch on the fan so it shuts off when the hot air temp drops to about 120F.  I use 2 pressure regulators, one at 25PSI for the nozzle, and another low pressure to regulate the pressure on top of the fuel which is how I control fuel delivered. the sweet spot is right around 7/8 - 1 PSI of fuel pressure.

[Carlb]

I have never tried 6/1 water injection, but I seem to recall that some folks tried this with mixed results.  Propane fumigation accomplishes the same thing since water and carbon dioxide are the products of propane combustion assuming adequate oxygen is available.  So in addition to steam cleaning your 6/1, you can also generate significantly more power by feeding a 6/1 propane.

You only need to drill/tap a hole into your 6/1 air intake, screw in a hose nipple, and then attach it to a pressure regulated propane tank having a flow control valve.  I imagine proper water injection would be more complicated although water is certainly cheaper than propane.

Bob B.

Thats exactly what i do with my 6/1 but i use Natural gas not propane.  I normally run 85% Natural gas 15% diesel.

[Carlb]

Ronmar,


I love your babington.  I did some experimenting a few years ago with a babington but never got it right.