I vaguely remembered my dad telling me about the old Cat diesels using a "stacked washer" type fuel filter that could be cleaned and returned to service. I looked in my old diesel 50 book and there they were. I am planning to run heated Waste Veg Oil in a D2 5U engine. WVO as a reputation for softening and clogging the filters of organic material. I believe I can make a filter plate to adapt a metalic filter (book calls it a strainer) to the D2. Can these filters be found anywhere? Did they work? Should I really be pondering this at all?

 

straining first with coffee filter papers will help and to make it flow and ignite easier mix it with diesel or a lighting kerosene at around 4 to 1 ratio works well in older engines. you could also use a arkal disc filter as a pre strainer for filling your blending tank being polythene it not affected by cold oil. the big issue is the acids in waste cooking oil and its also a mix of oils not just canola or safflower oil etc and most commercial cooking oils are blends anyway.

you can however make bio diesel from used oil using the trans esterfying process but this involves methanol and caustic soda and the accurate measuring and mixing of those compounds with the oil. do it wrong and you can have too much free methanol or caustic in the resulting bio fuel with will disolve seals and corrode things. these contaminants need to be "washed" out of the resulting fuel. its simpler to blend filtered waste oil with diesel or kero.

methanol is toxic, corrosive and flammable caustic soda is corrosive and reacts with many other compounds. a byproduct is glycerin which has uses for soap and cosmetics making. be-aware the insurance companies and the fire service wont take kindly to you making bio diesel at home. due to the quantities of methanol and caustic needed.
note the process can also be done with ethanol.

I have been running WVO in a D2 5U engine stationary, for about 10 years now. Clean your oil with a centrifuge if at all possible. Use aluminum in your filtering and fueling apparatus as little as possible. Other non-ferrous metals are susceptible to a smaller degree to acid corrosion, but aluminum is to the extreme. Black iron or steel is best. If you screen first and then try to filter, you will get about 6-8 hours per filter canister. You will find that to be expensive; a centrifuge is necessary. (Big thanks to this BB for that piece of wisdom 10 years ago!)

You don't have to worry about toxic byproduct or excess waste if you stick to WVO straight instead of biodiesel, but you will have to keep it warm--about 70 degrees F or hotter to make it flow. Your exhaust will be clean--very little carbon. You will not have the predicted carbon buildup in pre chambers or cylinders as predicted; that all comes with petroleum added for thinning. Your engine will develop more power than it will on diesel, and if it is warm it will start easily. WVO has a higher cetane rating than diesel oil.

WVO has provided quite an adventure for me. Have fun! I will help if I can, private message if you don't want to post something.

Please take a look at old postings from Jack, that's me. The guys on this BB walked me through the development of my WVO engine from major rebuild of a wrecking yard engine to, finally, a successful generator unit producing 240V, 70-75 A, 3 phase 60 cycles, It heats my shop in the winter by remote placement of the engine radiator also. Check it out. You will find answers to questions you haven't yet though of. Unfortunately, it appears that my photos have not been saved.

Jack

yes a centrifuge is a great way to clean any oil or fuel. hence why ships still use them. one point about bio fuel is it tends to dissolve any deposits in the fuel system and carry that to the filters. there is actually a south american plant known as the diesel tree that produces a oil that is very much like diesel cant think of its actual name but shell oil and mobil went as far as doing trials with it but they found in long term storage it went waxy and would gel. the main use is cosmetics.

another thing you can do is have 2 fuel tanks so you start and shut down on diesel and thus flush the fuel system of the acidic fuel keeping the waste oil warm is easily done with a heat exchanger and a 12v heater coil in the tank a heat exchanger could simply be a copper tube coiled a few turns round the exhaust pipe

One more detail: I tried holding WVO in a 600 gal polyethylene chemical tank such as farmers use for spray mixing or a nurse tank. WVO in the course of something less than half a year weakened that tank and caused it to split under the weight it was containing. There was structure build into the tank, but it wasn't adequate. You need to cradle the tank regardless of whether it is formed to set on a flat surface. I 'm no chemist. I don't know why it happened, but I saw first hand that it did, and I had to barrel about 450 gallons of oil with a hand pump.

its is heavy. compared to diesel fuel anyway. its much more dense. hot dip galvanised steel would be fine. so would plastic 44 gallon drums just keep stored out of the sun as they will build pressure also the sun ruins the drums eventually. i found out the hard way with a couple of drums of molasses, i was helping Karen the wife of a friend of dad's give the cattle some molasses the drum was laid of ready to pour from but had built pressure from the heat as i undid the bung i heard it releasing, thought i had vented it enough but no! i copped a bath and was covered head to toe. some of the cattle started to follow me i think they wanted to give me a few licks too. i was only about 13yr old

For WVO, stay away from the galvanized. The oil will dissolve it and it will turn up as a white gunk in the fuel filters or, hopefully not, beyond. Bare steel or iron is the best. Oil drums are fine, and black pipe is always available where natural gas or propane is used. Brass holds up pretty good, copper a little less. I would be suspicious of aluminum bronze alloy which is reputed to be proof against acids and salts, but it is aluminum and copper, and I think a little manganese or something else? What is for sure is I am starting to develop worm holes in my aluminum centrifuge bowl right now, and am pondering how to make one out of stainless or line it. Balance is critical. The thing runs at 4200 rpm, developes a couple hundred G's or more. I can't recall all of the figures right off, but it's hauling'. There's some whacky chemistry with WVO and I don't know the subject. But, it is good diesel engine fuel.

jack you could try one of the devcon or nordback epoxy coatings. they do have a application advice service give em a call they might have a suitable product.

I would be inclined to try epoxy iif or when I get deeper into fuel reclamation, but I'm reaching the age where handling WVO is getting to be a chore, and nobody in my family has any inclination to keep it running. Oregon has at this time some cash incentives to finance conversion to photovoltaic generation. I am thinking of phasing out the biofuel system and going to photovoltaic, but I won't junk out the generator any time soon. When I dejunk it out, I will give this BB first crack at a very strong, completely rebuilt D2 5U engine.