Running my Vauxhall Astra on veg oil

Farzackerly

mikey72 wrote: »

Anyone tried used engine oil yet?
(obviously duty paid, as it's dino). Should filter ok, apart from being black.
It'll take care of the problem of what to do if you change your own oil as well.

Absolutely loaded with soot and acid contaminants I wouldn't want to put into my fuel system. If you either centrifuge it clean or leave it sitting for a couple of years, it would be usable enough, diluted with dino or BD.

mikey72

Farzackerly wrote: »

Absolutely loaded with soot and acid contaminants I wouldn't want to put into my fuel system. If you either centrifuge it clean or leave it sitting for a couple of years, it would be usable enough, diluted with dino or BD.

Lowest ph of oil should be 6, and that's when it's well used, so it's not very acid. If anything it's normally alkaline. WVO is acidic.
I agree it's sooty, but it's low micron sized, so probably smaller than the old chip or bit of stray batter.
So better than WVO in theory.

worried_jim

It may have engine particles in it such as metal in small particles which may cause damage to the engine. I did hear of a Citroen owner who "recycled" the fluid from the hydrogas suspension via his fuel tank, the car ran ok but there was a ton of white smoke out the exhaust.

Rolandtheroadie

Found a demi-john and rope trick powered by time and gravity thats supposed to clean used oil.
It's definately worth more research for future reference.

mikey72

worried_jim wrote: »

It may have engine particles in it such as metal in small particles which may cause damage to the engine. I did hear of a Citroen owner who "recycled" the fluid from the hydrogas suspension via his fuel tank, the car ran ok but there was a ton of white smoke out the exhaust.

It may have, but again, if it's gone through all the same filters that WVO goes through, then the filter on the car, will it have any more than possibly WVO or even regular diesel may have, dino's only clean at the refinery, after that anything could happen to it.

Rolandtheroadie

Past reading again suggested car filters went down to 5 or 10 microns. I've been filtering to 1 micron.
Metal particles may be harder than chip/batter, perhaps magnets round the fuel filter would work (I think they sell them on ebay for oil filters for the same reason.)

mikey72

Half the engine isn't magnetic though. All the bearings, alloys of copper, brass, aluminium, and more exotic metals.

Rolandtheroadie

If it's worth running on muck, it's worth running on anything lol. I'd take my chances with engine damage.
I can see the day when the waste veg will become harder to get. Alternatives would be better found out just now.

Farzackerly

Fwiw, I've heated my house on a mixture of waste engine oil and heating kerosene, but it takes a bit of farting around to get the burner to run and a lot of filtering. I ended up making a sacrificial burner out of old units that I didn't care about ran that successfully enough. It's hard on pumps, though, which would make me distrust it for injection pumps on cars.

Rolandtheroadie

Farzackerly wrote: »

Fwiw, I've heated my house on a mixture of waste engine oil and heating kerosene, but it takes a bit of farting around to get the burner to run and a lot of filtering. I ended up making a sacrificial burner out of old units that I didn't care about ran that successfully enough. It's hard on pumps, though, which would make me distrust it for injection pumps on cars.

My central heatings kerosene as well, price is now at levels where it would be worth looking into firing bio into the tank (64p a litre last fill) but it seems a waste when you can be saving on the £1.30 diesel costs.

Everyone I know think I'm nuts, (and I may well be) but my thoughts are 10 years from now.

How will I heat and light my house? What will it be costing me? Can I do things now to lessen the blow?

Fitted a multi fuel stove, initially was going to have a back boiler but it was a 3 month wait at that time to get a fire that could run the central heating.
Was going the whole hog with a dunsley neutraliser to connect the oil and stove together.
Wish I'd waited now, but its done.