Never do that again...

Most things I will try at least once. About 3 months ago I decided to stop planning and talking and put a plan into action. I came across some used cooking oil, I dumped it (filtered) into my heating oil tank. Things seemed fine, the water also seemed hotter. Maybe it was the satisfaction of taking a first step into non reliance on Heating Oil. Anyways, my heater started misfiring; it eventually shut down. No big deal, I pulled the filter off; cleaned it. No good. So, I went the next step and tried to remove the nozzle. I had a heck of a time, when I managed to wrestle it out; it had a caked on varnish. Well, I cleaned it all up and reassembled. But I also decided, never again...



Jon

Alternative fuels can mess things up under some circumstances.

Note that used veggie oil is very different than biodiesel.


Biodiesel starts as animal fat or vegetable oil, then gets combined with lye and methanol, producing biodiesel, and a byproduct (glycerin, methanol and a bit of water) that falls to the bottom of the reaction vessel.

The byproduct has to be removed, the raw biodiesel washed and dried and filtered some more.

Biodiesel is far more like home heating oil or diesel than veggie oil, but still harder to light.



If you want to use the veggie oil directly in an oil heating appliance, the tube leading up to the nozzle generally needs to be heated up to 200F or more to get the viscosity into the normal range.

This produces a more normal spray pattern with a lower likelihood that bad things will happen.

Oh yeah, and the veggie oil has to be dried and filtered to remove particulate contamination and water.

I decided the straight veggy oil method was too risky for me.

I successfully ran my 2004 jetta on biodiesel for 180,000 miles. I gave it up last year when it got hard to get decent free oil from restaurants.

And an oil heater for the house, and an oil heater for the shop, and my tractor, and a generator, my dodge truck, etc.

It's also a big nuisance to get rid of the glycerin byproduct.

HTH,

troy