Hey guys, I appreciate all the input
The oil in question is a proprietary product - Valley Irrigation V-lube which is an 85-140
We use about 50-100 litres a day for six months of the year changing oils in the drive gearboxes of pivot irrigators. Its main property - apart from being thick and a bastard to get off clothing - is that is has wear--resistant additives designed for low-speed, high-load applications and some other additive that excludes water from it magnificently
Last week I welded a 40mm BSP socket into the side of a 200 litre drum about 150/200mm above the base, with the thought that if I filled a few drums like that and just "wrote off" the bottom 30-odd litres after letting it stand for a year or two - the top 7/8th might be close to "clean"
Just a couple hours ago I went into work and laid a drum of waste oil flat on the forks of the forklift and lifted it up and decanted it into my drum-with-bung. When it came to tilting the forks forward to get the last of the oil out - it suddenly ran thin for a moment then just clean water. In whatever way it does it - it does a great job of being anti-hygroscopic
Anyway, where I'm at now is I want a drip-feed, non fan-driven, non-spray-nozzle oil-burner (off grid, see?)
I have watched maybe 50 vids on you tube about these - design features, pitfalls, mistakes . . . and, rightly or wrongly I think I have a handle on the functioning & the airflow and maybe some of the pitfalls - possibly even learning from others' mistakes rather than making them myself which is out of character
Anyway, I've made one in three big bits - heavy steel mostly 10mm and pipe with 5.5mm wall - no cost at all just from bits in our pipework workshop, and have made a stand thingie so I can mount it outside my shed in the Bay of Plenty whenever Mr Covid and Ms Jacinda let me go up there (after mowing the goddamn lawns which will be knee high). I figure I can run it and tinker and curse and refine etc until I get it as right-ish as I can - then maybe make a "nice" one to fit in the shed (or maybe just use that one as I get lazy and don't do "nice" very well anyway
See short vid . . .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryItHmcBz7cThere's a million variants of this Ozzirt thing and I have built something based on that with, hopefully, fittings to control air to the pot, the secondary burner bit and , possibly, a tertiary air intake if there are still particles to burn further up
ANYWAY - excuse me writing a novel here - they work on the principle (oversimplifying here) that if you drip oil onto something red hot - then the resultant fumes/vapour are flammable
So, first, I need to have a play to get it working with ordinary waste oil. then, once I'm comfy with that, try with the heavy oil
It may burn just the same as any other oil once it hits something red hot? I guess we'll see
Thanks for all the inputs