I was just surfing the net for oil vaporising and came across this on a forum,I thought it might be of some interest.
Lots of forums with the topic of wmo, not any good reports so far.


09-17-2009, 10:23 PM
This story is in several threads already so I will try to shorten it. Dole, the Fruit Company tried mixing and burning waste Oil in their Diesel Generator Sets that run the Refer Units on Refrigerated Containers.

A white crusty residue started to plug up the Injectors on their Engines and the expense of repair got above the savings in burning the Waste Motor Oil.

Motor Oil has additives and such that are supposed to inhibit burning and are not in of themselve fuel; they can not be filtered out.

Did the USA not produce old diesel engines that are cheap to buy?
As a Listeroid or Petteroid don't seem any better at burning crap fuel than any other old diesel, and you said your cummins runs fine on crap, then why go to the hassle of buying Indian, Chinese or British built engines?
Just my opinion but may be just buy a cheap engine run it until it dies, then just buy another cheap engine.
How about a petrol engine and run it on gas from any thing you can produce gas with?
 
Cheers
Spencer

Spencer

we seem to be having a credibility problem, i am not sure of its origins
but you report a damaged engine in 1700 hours on wmo?

back in sept of 2010 you  report the following

http://lister-engine.com/lef/index.php?topic=5474.0

from that post

"The head gasket failed one night so the next day I stripped the engine down just 150 hours short of clocking up 2000 hours.
All this time its been run on waste engine oil mix and there was no carbon in the exhaust port and the head and piston top had very little carbon.
When I pulled the piston the rings and the sides of the piston where carbon free and clean.
I fitted a new gasket and its powering the pc and the house as I write this report.
I think this is good news and I see know reason to stop burning this free fuel."

so you see, we have a problem with your reporting, somehow since sept
when the engine had 150 hours short of 2000 (=1850) and the engine having very little carbon and no other issues apart from a blown head gskt, all these months
later the engine went down in hours 1700 and wore itself out?

do i need to go back further and post what you reported earlier, burning things like 2stroke oil, hydraulic oil, cutting with gasoline or waste diesel, filtering with only a sock filter, etc...

so what gives?
back in sept (4 months ago) you were a proponent of burning waste oils of all types
and report no engine damage, no you report few hours and a worn out engine?

something doesn't add up??

bob g

bob,
From memory at 1800 hours the thicker Indian head gasket went pop, to replace with new thinner genuine gasket had to reset bump clearance,as I had not decoked at the first 1000 hours I removed the barrel to decoke and reset the bump clearance for the new gasket thickness.

Engine parts where very clean with no deposits, but rings where worn out which after reading old style listers web site a year before it did mention ring wear with WMO but no bore wear, but no reason why or how quickly they would wear out.
Replaced rings .
Bore had also worn through the chrome but did not state this because at the time I was not sure what was happening and why this wear had happened at such low hours.
The engine runs and ran some more hours in this condition, but it breathed a lot and become noisier and slower to start[ loss of compression].

At the beginning the only problem that I new of and experience daily was carbon forming on the injector tip and all the different oils I tried burning made no difference to this problem.
Increasing the solvent % did how ever seem to sort the problem.

The clean internals of the top of the engine could be a result of constant sanding by the ash. LOL   


Any points not covered please ask again.

Spencer

bob and DD,
Lets call it a draw 
I will take a back seat and see if any one can come up with a simple solution
 
Spencer

quote author=mobile_bob link=topic=5619.msg66767#msg66767 date=1296504805]
to the group:

mark my business partner burns waste motor oil to heat both the shop and his house

his house is quite large by most standards at ~6000sq/ft, the shop ~3000sq/ft

the house uses an omni waste oil boiler and the shop a lenaire waste oil air/air heater.

the omni is cleaned out every month and produces about 2 gallons of ash and carbon, after burning anywhere between 4 and 15 gallons per day

the lenaire burns a butt load of oil all winter and is cleaned out once a year, it produces approx 1/2 gallon of ash/carbon

so why the disparity? and what can we learn from it?

one possible and probable explanation might be,  the boiler sidewalls are ~120 degree's F while it is likely that the sidewalls of the air/flue gas exchanger of the lenaire is probably well over 200 degree's F

the cooler side walls of the boiler will allow a much higher deposition of carbon
and some ash, the deposits of carbon would then be further heated by the continuous flames converting more and more of the carbon to ash.

the hotter side walls of the lenaire would impede the deposition of carbon and ash, and the force of the blower/gun assy would simply expel a significantly higher amount of carbon out the stack before further flame and heat could convert that carbon to ash, therefore explaining the much lower ash deposits in the furnace at cleanout.

now if we go back and look at spencer's rig and how he uses it

he reports using it to provide power for his modest home, and from the video it would appear he uses a 55gallon drum in thermal siphon. 

it is my bet that the majority of run time the engines is lightly loaded, perhaps under
1kw electrical, with this size of cooling capacity it is likely that the engine is running too cool, perhaps no more than the omni reference earlier. if this is the case, as i am fairly certain of, any carbon will deposit more so in the cylinder/piston, and head
and be subjected to further heating and convert to more ash,, light loading also causes
an engine to load up a bit, added oily patially burned goop combined with this ash
and collected in the rings and ring lands would work together to wear the dog snot out
of his engine.

this might also explain how something like a changfa 195 does so much better on waster oil as related by the fellow David from africa, the cooling system of a changfa is such that even without a load the engine will attain much higher temperatures than a lister can achieve. due to a much smaller cooling capacity
of approx 2 gallons as opposed to 30 or more in the 55 gallon drum.

the lister uses the surface of the drum to release the heat from the coolant water, while the changfa uses the phase change to cool with so much less coolant and far less surface area.

i also strongly suspect that the fellow with the ashwemegh 12/2 in georgia
had his setup either thermstatically controlled, under heavier average loading, or had
a cooling system sized appropriately for the load he presented to the engine.

there are lots of pieces to this puzzle, and a clearer picture is emerging.

it seems obvious to me that burning waste motor oil produces ash, how much ash,
 where it gets generated and deposited as well as how an engine is able to tolerate
it will all work together to establish how long the engine is likely to last.

it seem reasonable to conclude that running an engine at a light average load, running with an oversized cooling system for that average load, made from parts of lower quality than what might be needed for this type of fuel, will all work together to dramatically limit the longevity of the engine,,, as has been reported by spencer.

bob g


[/quote] 




That post is full of theory and misinformation

I own a Omni boiler and also a Thermobile jet type burner workshop heater and both produce lots of ash
The Omni boiler produces more to clean out because of the reduce air flow through the heat tubes where the slower the gasses pass through the more heat is transferred to the water, at no point any where in the combustion chamber of this Omni waste oil fired boiler is there any carbon just white dry ash.
All so the Thermobile blown air heater has no carbon just white ash.
The Thermobile heater being a blown air heater has a faster air speed through the combustion chamber as heat is dispersed over a longer heat exchanger and this has the result in more ash being blown out the chimney stack.
At no point will get black clumps of carbon when WMO is completely combusted.
The fact still remains that this ash from fully combusted WMO in any fairly large amounts will wear the moving pasts of an engine out
All fact as I own all three types of commercially produce waste oil heater and have done for many years.
Go to this site    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/altfuelfurnace/
At no point will black carbon exit the chimney unless there's a problem or you have just lit a vaporise pan heater which is not up to temperature.


At no point was my engine under loaded or running cold, FACT

Some one here keeps forgetting that fully combusted WMO makes white ash and black lumps of carbon are not fully combusted WMO

Spencer when the whole world is wrong and you are right shows there really is a problem. You have some more tricks up your sleve. This is not about tricks. It is about FACTS AND SOLUTIONS. Goodby Spencer.

No tricks from me DD
From our recent conversations on the forums and through pm you have show your real colours as some one who is clueless  when it comes to machinery and mechanical things with very little knowledge of the basics.
I have given you the FACTS so get on with what you want.
I have also gone to the effort of talking to the chap with the Lister CE as you asked me to do thanks for wasting my time.
 

Spencer did you read the post of the guy who stated 17,000 hours using WMO and was selling his engine. I believe his remark was it was still running just not very well. Then David from Afarica but that is a Changfa. This post is to see if there is a solution for the use of WMO. I called our local drive up and get your oil change shop because I knew he used a WMO furnace. Now the only filtration system is gravity. He has a 3 bay shop and the oil tank runs the entire legenth of the shop in the basement. The oil goes in one end and the furnace pulls it out from the other end. I ask him how much oil he uses in a regular winter and he guessed 2 to 3000 gallons. I ask him if the ash it produced was a problem. He said every spring when they are done with the furnace they clean the ash out and it only amounts to a coffee can full which is about a gallon. So for some reason there seems to be quite a bit less ash produced from his furnace that what you produced burning oil. Some how we need to figure this out. When I used wood heat I didn't have many more ashes in 2 days worth of burning than what you got from 6 gallons of oil. If you wish to be part of the solution that would be great. Please don't be part of the problem. Mike

DD,
Anyone who tells you that they burn 3000 gallons of waste oil and only get a coffee can full of ash is mad  
Go to this forum and ask people who use WMO how much ash is produced    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/altfuelfurnace/
I tried emailing the chap with the Listeroid but no reply. He probably was doing the same as bill and I, and then got fed up with all the maintenance problems and costs.
The chap from Africa needs to post pictures and explain his full story and his results and also why he has only just appeared at the same time as someone we know was starting to lose credibility with their argument.
I have no problem with anyone, but I just don't want anyone else to waste their time and money on setting up a generator because people have made untrue statements that they can run there engine on WMO for any length of time without wearing it in super quick time.
I may still have a trick up my sleeve yet and will ponder on it.

Spencer

Spencer:

i got your pm's and email and responded to both in post #159
now then i see you have posted another video and apparently
interested in my reaction.

first let me restate what i have said on several occasions

1. i am not saying that your engine has not worn out due to abrasives

2. i have asked that we take a good look at the situation, and try to
qualify and quantify the problem as reported.

3. i have suggested that perhaps there is something that might be done
to mitigate the problem

4. i have suggested that there might be other factors involved that aggravate
or accelerate the wear you have experienced

5. i have suggested that it is possible that things like a hardened liner, higher temperatures, might extend the lifespan of an engine burning wmo

etc etc.

having said all that before and restating it again, i have a few more questions

1. the latest video, with your narrative is the first decent presentation that provides us something other than a guy typing on a forum telling us the sky is falling, however
there are significant problems with the report.

2. it appear your test was using approx 7 gallons of oil, that would appear to be a huge amount of ash and carbon from that amount of oil

3. you do not mention by what means did you burn this oil, in an engine? in an oil burning furnace? something else?

4. clearly this experiment was not in an engine, as such volume of ash and carbon would destroy an engine is perhaps a few dozen hours, so are we to conclude that this product was from an oil burning furnace of some sort?

also are you aware of , at least it would appear from your video that you are unaware of the chemical treatment processes outlined by cognos over on the microcogen.info forum, the process is designed to strip the additives from the oil.

apogee has also posted video's of a distillation unit, that you summarily dismiss as also vaporizing the additives, even if this is the case it is not likely that those additives all condense at the same temperature as the fuel stock that is recovered.
with a decent cooling tower one ought to be able to separate out the fraction that has the fuel oil and that fraction that carries most if not all of the additives.

lastly, are you aware of the fellow in georgia that reports an engine for sale, while it needs a pair of sleeves, pistons, and rings, he has amassed 17k hours on the indian clone running exclusively wmo, transfluid, hyd oils etc. as he posted the engine for
sale back in early december it is unlikely he has a dog in this hunt, and simply is being honest about his engine and his experience. clearly something is different with his engine, his oil, the way he is processing the oil or something? he got 10x the run time that you did in your exercise.

in closing, yes there seems to be a problem burning waste motor oil for some folks with some engine's under some conditions,  we still don't have all the answers yet, we simply have anecdotal evidence that wmo will kill your engine and we have anecdotal evidence that it is just fine as a fuel.

with fuel prices what they are, and with the destablization of the middle east currently taking place (egypt being the latest problem) it is likely that oil prices will
do nothing but escalate. this will lead more folks to wmo and wvo as alternatives along with woodgas and yes even frog farts if one has enough of them to use as fuels.

we need to move forward and qualify and quantify this problem, find ways to mitigate it so that engine life can be extended to something acceptable and dependable.

thats all i am saying (most of which i have said over and over before)

bob g

I think any ideas of increasing an engines life to slow it's early death is a bit pointless when the fuel you protested was perfectly fine to use in a diesel engine, produces such large amounts of ash.
You are still questioning my results but have not carried out any of your own.
If any one has to keep repeating them selves it's me as you just wont listen.
How many liners and rings are worn out before the whole exercise becomes pointless.
Processing WMO at home safely and cheaply is going to be unrealistic.
You carry out a test to see for your self and you will see burning filtered WMO as fuel in an engine is not practical long term.
It does not matter how you burn WMO it will still produce the same volume of dry abrasive ash.
I have asked for other long term WMO users to speak up but apart from Billswan who's engine also suffered damage no one has come forward, only a spoof  post on the other forum with a fishy story.

Spencer