Waste Oil Heater Forum - Your definitive source for burning waste oil for heat.

None of these burners take a liquid to a gas.

Mine do. Exactly the principal they work on. I build them, I know how they are designed and what they are doing.

 

They atomize with pressure or air. I do have a vaporizer,  a different set of rules.

 Mine do not vaporise or spry. They use latent heat to phase change the fuel from a liquid to a gas which is what burns. Liquid does not burn. The gas/ vapor emanating from it does.  The atomisation is to break up the volume of fuel to be burned and give it more surface area so it will phase change more quickly and can be mixed with air more readily. 

Maybe some of what you say is applicable to commercial burners but it sure isn't over all applicable to  every burner by a long shot.

If the oil is burned properly the ash is so fine it is just exhausted with the flue gasses.  Run my vehicles on oil for hundreds of thousands of KM  and never had to clean out the engine, exhaust or anything else. 

My guess is it comes down to the oil itself.
Diesel oil is lighter than regular engine oil.  Trying to think with diesel is chasing ones tail as diesel is not that thin itself.
A far better thinner is Kero or turps.  Much lower viscosity even though diesel seems pretty thin in comparison.
I do not recommend petrol as the vapors can fill a tank and have undesirable results.

One solution may be to take a leaf out of the Veg oil Vehicle book.  Add a second small start up tank with thinned oil or Diesel and fire the burner up on that. Once it has a bit of heat, change over to the regular fuel oil.

As far as stratification goes, I have never seen it in properly mixed oils.  I have done tests in fridges and freezers and never seen it but there are many types of oil and I don't know what the long term effects are if one lives in some frozen winter hell hole.

May people take blending to be like trying to mix oil and water but it's not. There is no reason on a molecular level that the oils will separate but particles certainly could.
Depending on the oil used, any dissolved water can cause problems.  nit usualy a problem with mineral oils/ Fuels but certainly can be an issue with veg oil.

1500 gal is almost 6000L.
I never cease to be amazed at how much fuel some people go through.

To put it in other terms, if you conservatively say that oil has 10.5 Kw/ L, burning 6000L yields an energy output of 63000Kw.
Have you thought about closing your doors in winter??  :0)

If you were buying that in electricity at the middle of the road rate I pay, that would cost you a solid $22,000 to heat your home for..... 3-5? months?

With that sort of volume, the only readily available container I can think of which is cheap and can be used for transport or storage is an IBC.  They are 275?  gallon, 1000L for the modern world, and can be forked for easy loading and stacking.
I had 6 of them at home for my veg oil to settle and store the finished processed oil. Of course the 6 of them gave me enough fuel to run 2 vehicles for over a year and fuel to spare for travelers and friends.

How long is your winter?
I'd love to work out how much KW worth of heat you are going through a day!

I suppose it depends what your definition of cold is.
I have done cold oil with the hand pumps and they work fine. If you are talking about frozen oil, that may be different.

The thing with the redline pumps is no matter how good the motor, they are still relatively low HP. One I saw was 1/3rd Hp.
 That's not a lot of power to move this biblical cold oil everyone goes on about and at decent flow rates.  If it was such a ridiculous idea to try and move this oil with a hand pump, it would be doubly stupid to try and use an electric pump with that low of a power rating and even more stupid to pay that sort of money for one.

I did look at another brand of US made pump years ago that that a really good flow rate. The company made a whole range of different pumps  for all sorts of applications although I seem to recall most of them were rubber vane pumps. They weren't cheap either but I think unless someone was trying to pump something semi solid, they would work.
I have a couple of these brass vane pumps I was given which are popular on boats and they seem to work well on actual liquids as they are designed rather than semi solid material. They are self priming which is what one really needs and once they have bit into the liquid, move it very fast. By design they do have a lot of inherent drag even when pumping oil though so do take a bit of power.  They are very fast though.

I still think the best idea is to wait until things get warmer instead so the oil is more liquid than solid and prepare in advance rather than trying to muck around at the worst possible time.

I don't think the physical size of a 2 Hp motor over a smaller one is going to be any different.
Would a 2 HP be more expensive where you are?   Not much difference between a 1/4 Hp and anything up to a 2 here if you buy used.

You are talking about frozen oil which in my very limited experience with very cold and thick oil, puts a LOT of drag on a motor.  I think you'd be a lot better off with something bigger rather than too small.  While a smaller motor may work, a lot would depend on how much oil you want to pump. thicker the slower it will move for a start.
I just don't like to labor things. Shortens their life and they under perform.  A few bucks extra on a motor you don't have to worry about will likely make your free fuel gathering a lot easier and faster and with what you are saving, I always think anything spent on equipment for out oil endeavors within reason is a good investment.

I did look up the power to drive those pumps many years ago. it was something like 4-5 HP at full pressure. Now we aren't using pressure but we are doing more flow the way I mod them and they certainly weren't measuring on oil at freezing temp you can be sure of that. Point is while we can get away with much smaller motors, the power required by the pump in it's OEM config is a lot higher than 2HP anyway so it's not overkill by any means.

One other thought comes to mind...
Why are you even trying to muck around with oil when it is so cold?

I pretty much gather all my oil in the summer when it's the most available being I gather Veg oil.  I can go out and with a little effort and traveling around the area and pick up 2000+  litres in a day and certainly a weekend.  I put it in IBC's to settle which helps with the filtering and basically lay in more than enough stock to get me through the winter ( or year).  I filter and  put away the clean ready to go oil and do not even think of mucking around with it over winter. Come half way through spring or when I feel motivated I start filtering again and make room along the production line for more dirty oil to come in at the end.

You Wake up to these things on how to make the process a lot easier once you have been doing it a while.  :0)

Veg is a lot harder to get in winter ( people don't eat out nearly as much) it's slower to pump and usually has more water and I don't like going out on the cold mornings or nights.  In summer it's quite nice.  And of course  the oil is like water so you don't have to worry about fats and are gone to the next pickup much quicker.

I think the key to the problem may not even be the pump you use but rather preparation so you don't have to worry and can move the stuff easily and when it's not such a chore!

For a long time now I have been Using Small Block Chev oil pumps I modify like I have yet to see anyone else do.
Most people seem to use at least one of the small ports as the Pumps come. This to me is highly restrictive and basicaly a waste of their potential in this application.
I block off both the original inlet and outlet of the pumps and bore a hole to take a 1" pipe fitting in the sides of the casings right where the gears are.

I use a 300W 24V scooter motor and can get 80l min on warm oil and have yet to find anything I can't pump that is still at least semi solid.
With no insult intended, I'd go freaking nuts hanging round pumping at 2gpm and a lot higher.  I can get 12GPM ( 50L) running the motors on half power, 12V.

This is a demo vid I did ages back of an early pump in action. I improved a bit on it since
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8o52BYTEau4

This vid explains the pumps construction a bit more.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkBIYcT6j8U

I have yet to find a pump other than one powered by a petrol 5 Hp engine that will keep up with these.  I did have one running off a battery lawnmower motor for a while and that was a ball tearer.  They are good up to about 3000 RPM but you do need around 500W+ depending on the oil you are pumping to get them to that. Just because the motor is XXXX rated, don't expect it to be doing that under load!

The performance on thick oil is also very good, about as good as one could get I believe.  If you can draw the semi solid fats into a hose, these things will do it and spit it out the other end.
I have a couple I use at home with AC motors. one is 1/3HP and the other is 1HP, both 2800Rpm motors.  They work really well and move oil fast. I use these for transfering  up to multi 1000L of oil at a time in IBC's and have pumped at least 60K L with these different pumps over the years.

The only problems I have had with the things is the occasional Blockage when I have sucked up cloth Napkins which Jam the gears. Most times I can simply wind the pump back by hand ( with great effort) and  once free reverse the motor and blow out whats left. Few times I have had them wrap round the gears and had to take the back cover off the pump and clear them that way.

You cannot put shutoff valves on these pumps being positive displacement and as I araldite the relief valve closed, the pumps will either stall the motor driving them ( 1 HP no problem) or the hose bursts. they have to be started and stopped with the motor.  Some people might like to put a DC PWM motor speed controller on them if they had need for lower pumping rates.

I have been doing this a while now and always looking for the holy grail with something better but yet to find anything that beats these SBC pumps modified this way that allows for their full flow capabilities.

When it comes to creativity in oil burners, those ruskies and assorted baltics sure do take the prize!
I spose when it comes to trying not to freeze to death and having to use whatever you can get hold of with little available funds, ingenuity kicks in pretty well.  :0)

I have seen similar blue flame Vids before. Something I have never been able to achieve so far although I can't say it's ever been a goal either.
it looks to me like they are heating the oil just enough to boil  or evaporate off the volotiles and mix them with the incoming air to create the blue flame.  I notice as you said they all seem to have a pool of oil at the bottom with  a reserve of oil on the outside of the tank.  It would seem to me that they are in fact " Cracking" or pyrolising the oil and burning it in situ.
I think with this type of setup may well be able to get a similar result from wood chips or other solid fuels.

I also wonder if there is much ash or buildup left as a result of burning the oil this way and the oil pool itself seems quite cool and wouldn't burn the carbon deposts to ash and exhaust them.

I designed my first downdraft type burners the same way.  I had a tube going down into an extinguisher bottle with the end blocked off and the air exiting though holes drilled in the sides.  If I remember correctly the first tests had the oil being blown in with the air. This was a failure because the turbulence of the air tended to blow smoking hot but incomplete combusted droplets of oil out everywhere.

 The 2nd approach was to put the oil in the bottom of the bottle and let the connected heat  phase change it to gas.  this worked but I felt the thin gauge of the steel in the extinguishers was not transferring heat fast enough to the oil and I could never get the sort of output I wanted from the amount of air supplied.

I'm not sure where this was different from the burners in the vids.  I'm thinking that perhaps the pooled oil in their burners is not lying on the bottom of the vessel but rather in a smaller vessel sitting within.
I'm also thinking that perhaps the air pipe has a higher clearance than mine did.

In the end I pretty much abandoned this air pipe design. Unlike what I initially expected, I found I could aim the air stream straight down into the oil and it burnt quite well and I could blow the fuel in with the air and get a strong, clean output.  As it's a lot easier to throw a bent bit of pipe into a metal container than have to weld and drill holes in it, I went the easiest way out.

I have researched the Blue/ yellow flame thing and everything I have read says a blue flame is not hotter at all, it's just the way the carbon atoms are being handled. All the papers seem to agree on this and I have not seen any commercial burners that do a blue flame. I surmise when they are all talking about efficiency and emissions, if there were a benefit to a blue over a yellow flame, that's what we'd see commercial burners like yours doing especially the western made ones where efficiency is a big selling point.

Nothing I have read suggests that a blue flame is hotter or cleaner, rather just a more attractive flame.
I would like to know how to construct a blue flame burner as I'm sure it would increase my understanding of combustion and may allow me to develop the method to different applications in a more workable way than what I'm doing now.   

 I'd rather buy (read already bought) a Chinese waste oil burner. Cost me just over $1K, which may seem like a lot, but to me, it is pretty much exactly the amount that I spend on electricity each month running our heat pumps.

Do you have a link to the burner you bought? Have you run it yet and if so, how is it going?

I'd like to hear how the spa heater works out. We have a pool/spa but it barely gets used - much too cold here most of the year, so yeah, definitely interested to see what you are planning.

I have only played with it so far as I'm moving house in 4 weeks and didn't want to connect it to the pool.  I have been running veg oil in my vehicles 15 years this October and looking for a way to heat the pool was the original reason I got into this oily caper. Done a lot with it but still haven't heated the pool with it and the new place doesn't have one although we are planning on putting in a sunken spa outside.

All I have done is remove the gas burner and put in an oil burner made from a LPG bottle. There are a couple of vids of it on my channel but it's nothing special. Normal side entry, blown in fuel job.  The spa heater is rated at 100KW. At first I thought I can easy double that without thinking about it but a mate that works with these things warned me not to go over the rating. If the water boils in the exchanger tubes there can be all sorts of problems so I'll back the thing off to 90 Kw to be on the safe side for the spa if I use it for that or down to about 30 for the house and just have it cycling.

For a spa it would be an easy setup. Just fire the thing till the water is hot enough and then I imagine you could shut it down as the water should stay warm a good while or just have the thing idling.
Starting off with a spa heater and converting is easy as you have the cabinet, refractory blocks and a good Heat exhanger to work with from the start. All you have to do is make sure you have ample water flow through the HE itself and don't over drive the thing or have flame touching the tubes.

I also have a 200KW set of tubes but no cabinet I can use as well. Probably use the small unit for the house and the larger one for the spa although that said, I always thought of using my pool for a huge thermal mass so I could fire up one or 2 days a week and then just circulate the water through the house. A spa would be much better than a pool for heat loss but still provide a good thermal mass. 

As for solar, our HWS has those vac solar tubes with elec boost. The solar works well during summer, we can switch the boost off but in winter it only gets luke warm so I'm interested to see what you have planned. Please make vids if you go ahead.

I'm a bit surprised to hear that. I was under the impression those Vac tubes worked really well all year round and any sun falling on them heated the water. Guess not.
I have been touting going with used PV panels on other forums and been endlessly told that the Tubes are more efficent. I don't  doubt that ( although there are clearly proviso's) but my position is that's its far cheaper and easier for me to buy used PV, they are much easier to wire up than plumb up ( putting them on the shed up the back is no trouble where running hot water up there would be expensive and inefficient) and once the water is heated which could be quite early in the day given a big enough array, I can have the heater itself switch the power elsewhere through a dual thermostat.
With water heaters the tank can be up to temp fairly early on and then they just boil the water off or whatever they do.

Your info bout the tubes not working so well in winter is another plus for the PV heating.  Electric panels work better in cool weather than hot so will be in their element when you want them the most for this job.  I plan to over drive the element a bit on voltage so I have full power  early and later in the afternoon when the light levels drop.  haven't quite figured how I'm going to do them yet.  Easiest option would be to run an array of about 300V max straight to the heater.
 I can also use a PWM controller to regulate the output or as I have done when playing and learning, run a bunch of panels in parallel and put the power through an inverter to step it up and PWM the output (2Kw) from there.
Think I'll try the direct 300V array first and see how that goes as it's going to be the simplest and I think have reasonable efficiency.

 

I have a good friend who has an Ultratune workshop. They need to dispose of about 600L of oil each month and I can have it all if I wish.  I might buy an IBC and a pump, and pump it instead of handling heavy drums.

Sounds perfect. Stockpile what you want to get you through. If you can get 600L a month, 2 Ibc's should be fine as you'll get another 6 weeks supply or so over the winter anyway.

I gave up on veg oil tins a LONG time ago. I just ( still) use the Chev oil pump I made and pump from drums into a 200L drum in the back of the wagon. As it's on a DC motor, when I get home I reverse the polarity and pump it out again into a convenient holding drum.  The pump is hard plumbed to the collection drum so when it's empty, I just pull the thing out and sit it in in the driveway till the next run. I have about 5M of hose on it and have been running the thing from one of those  lithium Jumper starter packs for the last 2 years. They fit in your pocket and weigh nothing but the one I have has enough juice for at least 600L of oil in and out again.
 Before that I just got a used battery from the wreckers although no reason you couldn't put in some wiring from the vehicle battery.

I also plan to build a fan forced heater for my workshop.  Anyway, plan is to build it like you show on your vids, but then to put a 44 gal drum over it with a fan installed on top and holes or slots in the front of the drum.

This is also something I have planned. The drum over the top of the bottle is a good Idea. I was thinking of using an old car LPG tank to get more surface area. I also want to run the flue at an angle along the wall as far as possible and maybe have a fan blowing along that as there is a lot of heat in the exhaust gasses and most people seem to just duct that heat away as soon as possible which makes no sense to me.

The other option is to convert a wood burning heater. I'd actually prefer that so I could see the flames. I want to make the shed bit of a man cave as well and make a nice area for my Lister engine and other generators. See how I go. I was going to double the size of the garage but then a friend worked out that would require the excavation of 100 tons or more of soil as the block has a slope. I'm thinking now I might cut and backfill at the centre point of the rear shed to step it up from the existing floor and put a ramp in to get up there. Also Looking at going 4.8M high at the back and putting in a mezzanine. If I do that the spa heater with plumbed radiators may be better for spreading the heat around.

Of course then there is the thing of doing a co gen setup with the lister which is another ambition. Run the thing to generate and backfeed power and use the heat from the coolant to heat the shed. At 4KW, wouldn't be a bad output and  I could also extract some heat from the exhaust although consensus seems to be there isn't a great deal to be gained on that front.  Guess I can always test for myself. 

More than one way to heat with oil!  :0)