Author Topic: blended waste motor oil results  (Read 59249 times)

Jim Mc

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Re: blended waste motor oil results
« Reply #30 on: January 04, 2007, 03:11:05 AM »
We have some old Ruston & Hornsby sales brochures on running their horizontal diesels on waste engine oil...

Peter, any mention of how the waste oil was to be filtered prior to use?

hotater

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Re: blended waste motor oil results
« Reply #31 on: January 26, 2007, 01:22:51 PM »
To remove the red from diesel run it through three feet of common floor dry....(low grade Fuller's earth with about 60% diatomatious earth) and then an cloth or felt filter before a good engine filter.

Production is very slow through a six inch pipe...possibly a gallon an hour at 30F ambiant.

NO!  It ain't my machine!!  I just put it together for an experimentor. 
OH,  He says one small dab of Cobalt Blue oil paint to ten gallons gives it a nice tint.   ;)
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Currently running PS-Kit 6-1/5Kw...and some MPs and Chanfas and diesel snowplows and trucks and stuff.

Phiberoptik

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Re: blended waste motor oil results
« Reply #32 on: February 02, 2007, 03:11:17 PM »
I'm running a chinese 495 diesel on an ST-20 direct drive. I run 75% WMO and 25% #2 fuel oil blend. I use fleet oil that I pick up locally with my home grown tank trailer with an old oil truck pump, a 25hp Onan engine, and a 200gal horizontal oil tank.  Here's how my setup works. I blend the raw WMO and the #2 oil in the storage tank.  I bring the oil blend unfiltered into my run tank passing it only through a water seperator.  Then it goes into my heated prefilter system.

I use a plate type stainless steel heat exchanger heated by engine coolant. before the fuel enters the heat exchanger, it passes through a 12V three way solenoid valve. This allows me to leave the system full of #2 FO at shutdown so it'll start without ethering it to death. Next it goes on to the first stage prefilter. This prefilter is nothing more than a felt type filter commonly used on a residential oil burner, it's commonly known as a "general filter". The replacement element can be had for under $2.00 and needs to be changed monthly under continuous use. This, of course, depends on the cleanliness of the waste oil.

After leaving the general filter, it goes into a 10 micron Garber spin on oil filter. Again, this is something that's designed to use on residential oil burners. I put the Garber optional restriction guage on top of the Garber filter housing so it shows me the restriction in the first stage and the second stage at the same time. Any time the restriction gets out of the green scale, just change the first stage filter and it drops right back down. With about 1000 hours on it, I've not yet had to replace the Garber filter, but I like the assurance of having a 10 micron filter in the prefilter.

From there, it goes through the stock 2 stage fuel filters that came with the genset. Once it reaches the injector lines, I put a Carlin nozzle line heater close to the injector on each injector line to heat the fuel again. I attached these little ceramic heaters with spring clips that I bent in the vice and covered the joint where the heater meets the line with red silicone to avoid heat transfer into the air.

I start the engine on #2 fuel oil, let it run until the coolant temp is 70C, then flick the switch to the WMO blend. It works great. The only time I ever had any problems is when I tried to run straight WMO in it. I noticed that the exhause was starting to show some light smoke and running in #2 didn't clear it up. I removed and cleaned the injectors and went back to the 75/25 mix. 500 hours later it's still going strong and makes no smoke whatsoever. Come time to shut it down, I run it for 20 or 30 minutes on #2 fuel oil to clean the WMO mix out of the system and make for easy starting.

This won't work in a two pipe system unless you use a holding tank after the prefilters to put the return fuel through or it's just going to plug up the first stage prefilter very quickly. My generator set has a one pipe system, so this makes it a lot easier. If you add a tank, you'll need to vent the air / vapor out of it continuously with a float vent or similar device, but it should work just fine. If you need to vent, make sure to run the vent line back to your holding tank, so if the float valve gets stuck you don't make a mess.

raw fuel blended in the holding tank -> Water seperator ->Three way solenoid valve -> plate type heat exchanger -> General oil filter -> Garber oil filter -> both stock oil filters -> injector line heaters -> then into the engine.

SCOTT

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Re: blended waste motor oil results
« Reply #33 on: February 02, 2007, 05:11:26 PM »
Phiberoptik
Hi  I am interested to get your impression of the Chinese 495 series engines.  What do you think of the quality?  Where did you buy it from etc.  The prices on these are attractive but I am weary of the quality and avaliability of parts.  Let me know your thoughts on the engine.

Thanks
Scott
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Phiberoptik

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Re: blended waste motor oil results
« Reply #34 on: February 02, 2007, 06:26:11 PM »
The 495 engine itself appears to be of good quality. George at Utterpower.com told me that it uses a lot of Changfa 195 parts, so I guess I could probably get some of replacement parts from Hardy Day if I needed to get them in a hurry.

The cooling system is a little on the inadequate side and it could use an oil cooler as well, but the generator set came with a microprocessor controller that monitors it for high coolant temp, high oil temp, low oil pressure, overcurrent, and overspeed. It gives me a nice LCD display that shows all the info at any given time and if it goes into emergency shutdown it stores the reason why for my review when I go look in the shed to see why it isn't running. The safetys work well, I've seen that happen.

I bought the whole set from generatordepotusa.com for about $4K. Like all chinese import stuff, plan to do some work on it to chase out the gremlins. Here's what I had to do to it for repairwork (and a couple of band-aid fixes)so far.

Rear bearing in the ST-20 generator head needed replacement at about 100 hours. I used a standard 6309 double sealed SKF bearing obtained locally. The originally bearing was an open bearing and never should have been put into that envoirnment. The lubricant was apparently inferior and had hardened.

Front bearing on the ST-20 failed at about 250 hours. The drive plate was a real bitch to get off the generator shaft. I had to make a puller for it and use a bottle jack to get it off the shaft. The bearing was a 6310 and I used the same type of double sealed bearing as in the rear. Reassembly of the drive plate to the shaft was easy with a 10 lb sledgehammer and a block of hardwood.

Note: even the front bearing replacement wasn't too bad. It took me about 4 hours and that included making the puller. The rear bearing was even easier.

Vibration broke some wires in the control panel (mounted to the top of the ST-20). It also damaged a relay by breaking off the coil wire and destroyed both CTs that provide current input to the microcontroller. I repaired all the other electrical damage, replaced the CTs with standard 100:5 CTs that I bought on ebay, then I extended the wiring harness and relocated the control panel on the shed wall to prevent further vibration damage. more thn 500 hours since then and no more electrical problems.

The Radiator sprung a leak at around 350 hours and I took it to a local repair shop and had it fixed. It's an all aluminum radiator and it has steel rivets so they can solder the mounting panels to it. One of the rivets had cracked the aluminum from vibration.

I had to set a window fan next to the oil pan to keep the oil temp down. The oil pan is cast iron and conducts the heat fairly well. A little air movement makes a huge difference. I plan to remove the radiator and tank cool this into a minimum 500 gal tank before the hot weather and I'll set up a car radiator on that as a dump zone. I'll make an adapter place on my milling machine to get the oil in and out at the oil filter flange so I can just run it through a heat exchanger and use engine coolant to keep the oil temp down. Tank cooling the engine will allow me to reclaim this heat next winter for heating the house.

The engine itself hasn't given me any trouble at all to date except for a couple of loose bolts that neded to be tightened up. oil pan and alternator bolts. I had to clean the injectors once when I was experimenting with 100% WMO. It seems to like the 75% WMO mix. I haven't tried anything between 75% and 100% yet.

I'm happy with it. Sure it had a lot of little stuff that needed attention, but I kind of figured that since before I bought it.

Hillbilly Hermit

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Re: blended waste motor oil results
« Reply #35 on: April 01, 2007, 02:31:26 PM »
I dump whatever I get WVO or WMO in my 120 gal tank which is never full so I don't know the ratio (probably up to 50%) but that Detroit v8 turbo just keeps going like the energizer bunny gettin 10+ mpg in a 30k gvw bus with an auto trans. Never noticed any difference.

phaedrus

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Re: blended waste motor oil results
« Reply #36 on: April 15, 2007, 05:33:56 AM »
Right now we use pump diesel in a 6-1. Between that and the solar/battery/inverter system we only need the engine about 2 hours per day on average. I have about 20 drums of GKW (God knows what), stuff that came out of a garage that repaired cars. Mostly it's waste lube oil, but no doubt there's glycols and all the horrid rest. I need to clean this stuff up to use it as fuel in the 6-1 and also just to dispose of it responsibly.  I have plenty of time to think the process over, hence this post - I'm soliciting ideas, especially about books on the subject and on the chemistry.

Seems to me that the thing to do is to create a stainless batch tank where the material can be washed-stirred with water and settled, draining away the glycol-acid/base, alcohols, and associated stuff that likes water. This contaminated water can be evaporated to a manageable volume of gooey crud - and our local landfill will take it. It's a small total mass once it's evaporated. This leaves, of course, the oily part. Following this washing and separation the oily material'd go to a NAPA hydraulic filter at 10 microns, then through a (power steering) pump and through a 1 micron filter to a bulk intermediate storage tank. Dilution of the oily material with commercial petroleum diesel and/or gasoline or some lighter hydrocarbon  would then take place, with the object of reducing viscosity to some experimentally established level - perhaps close to the viscosity of 20W lube oil. This may be an acceptable fuel for the 6-1 in our Mediterranean climate. If so, then this diluted fuel would go to the bunker tank and be used to fill the day tank at the beginning of every run. I plan to use a propane "fumigation" system as an adjunct, primarily to minimize carbon accumulation in the engine at light loads. Induction air will be at saturation with water vapor for the same reason(s).

That's as far as I can see things now. I am uneasy about the pH of the fuel I'd have by this process. I am uneasy about whatever it is that I haven't thought of...

Ideas????
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cujet

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Re: blended waste motor oil results
« Reply #37 on: April 16, 2007, 02:14:23 PM »
I do not think you need to go through so much effort.

I have a bunch of waste oil. It does settle over time to a "product" that would work well with little effort. The key is time. Gravity filtering it via a Motorguard TP micronic filter is sufficient to remove the smallest particulates that could affect diesel engine operation. A water absorbing filter could also be used.

Chris

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SCOTT

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Re: blended waste motor oil results
« Reply #38 on: April 16, 2007, 08:19:46 PM »
Jens
I suggest you send the unfiltered oil out for analysis and send another sample after filtering.  You will then have objective data on how well your filtering scheme works.  This is avaliable from various sources for about $20-$25 per sample.

Scott
« Last Edit: April 16, 2007, 08:28:09 PM by SCOTT »
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phaedrus

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Re: blended waste motor oil results
« Reply #39 on: April 20, 2007, 04:56:48 PM »
Chris, the reasoning behind the water washing is to remove the water soluble glycols and so forth - this stuff being GKW from a garage I assume that they dumped in old brake fluids and antifreeze. Otherwise I would omit the water business and just filter.
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ronsmith

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Re: blended waste motor oil results
« Reply #40 on: May 31, 2007, 02:02:44 AM »
I have been running hyd oil mixed with about20percent wmo thats been filtered through a toliet paper filter with good results in a petter and my changfa also. The toliet paper filter catches the particles and sludge pretty good. When I change filters i use the roll to ignite brush piles.

rbodell

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Re: blended waste motor oil results
« Reply #41 on: May 31, 2007, 02:46:02 AM »
I see a lot of mention here about filtering WMO, but nothing about checking PH. Are we checking PH?

mkdutchman

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Re: blended waste motor oil results
« Reply #42 on: May 31, 2007, 08:13:35 PM »
I see a lot of mention here about filtering WMO, but nothing about checking PH. Are we checking PH?
How do we go about doing that?

CD in BC

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Re: blended waste motor oil results
« Reply #43 on: November 12, 2007, 04:17:16 AM »
Right now we use pump diesel in a 6-1. Between that and the solar/battery/inverter system we only need the engine about 2 hours per day on average. I have about 20 drums of GKW (God knows what), stuff that came out of a garage that repaired cars. Mostly it's waste lube oil, but no doubt there's glycols and all the horrid rest. I need to clean this stuff up to use it as fuel in the 6-1 and also just to dispose of it responsibly.  I have plenty of time to think the process over, hence this post - I'm soliciting ideas, especially about books on the subject and on the chemistry.

Seems to me that the thing to do is to create a stainless batch tank where the material can be washed-stirred with water and settled, draining away the glycol-acid/base, alcohols, and associated stuff that likes water. This contaminated water can be evaporated to a manageable volume of gooey crud - and our local landfill will take it. It's a small total mass once it's evaporated. This leaves, of course, the oily part. Following this washing and separation the oily material'd go to a NAPA hydraulic filter at 10 microns, then through a (power steering) pump and through a 1 micron filter to a bulk intermediate storage tank. Dilution of the oily material with commercial petroleum diesel and/or gasoline or some lighter hydrocarbon  would then take place, with the object of reducing viscosity to some experimentally established level - perhaps close to the viscosity of 20W lube oil. This may be an acceptable fuel for the 6-1 in our Mediterranean climate. If so, then this diluted fuel would go to the bunker tank and be used to fill the day tank at the beginning of every run. I plan to use a propane "fumigation" system as an adjunct, primarily to minimize carbon accumulation in the engine at light loads. Induction air will be at saturation with water vapor for the same reason(s).

That's as far as I can see things now. I am uneasy about the pH of the fuel I'd have by this process. I am uneasy about whatever it is that I haven't thought of...

Ideas????

A centrifuge would be the obvious answer I would think.  One that will separate fluids and solids of different weights, not one that simply removes solids, such as the Spinner etc.

aqmxv

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Re: blended waste motor oil results
« Reply #44 on: November 12, 2007, 05:06:53 PM »
I see a lot of mention here about filtering WMO, but nothing about checking PH. Are we checking PH?
How do we go about doing that?

There's a little bit of a misnomer here - you can't check pH in a nonpolar (oily) system.  what you generally do is put a known amount of the oil to be tested in a jar (Ideally a separatory funnel) along with a known amount of deionized water, then shake vigorously for a known time.  This allows the water to come in contact with any polar compounds in the oil.

Then you stand it upright and wait for it to separate out.  Draw off the water fraction and measure the pH of it.

For the test to actually mean anything you have to have known standards to work with.  I'm sure there's an ASTM standard somewhere...
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