Seal leaking with spin-on filter submerged in hot water -- I don't see this as being any more of a problem than any other hose-in-hose type situation.
I have never had a spin-on filter leak at the seal, you just have to lube the seal surface with a film of oil, then tighten it a bit more than the filter manufacturers indicate, turn it up hand tight, then use filter wrench or pliers to turn it there suggested "one more turn", then snug it down another half turn to a full turn or so til it feels right, this WILL require you to use a filter wrench or pliers to UNSCREW the filter.

The filter's flat seal surface is usually at least a quarter inch wide, wider for 100 pound rated hydraulic filters, so there is a LOT of sealing surface.

The seal is a simple wide, flat, sealing surface, I see no reason why it would leak from the outside-in any more than it would from the inside-out, the hydraulic filters are spaced for at least 100 pounds pressure without leaking, my setup will only have a few pounds pressure on the outside water, the inside oil may be anywhere from a few pounds with a new filter, up to as high as 100 pounds as the filter clogs, max pressure will depend on when I get around to changing the filter. The internal pressure will be higher than the water pressure except possibly just after a new filter is installed, probably even then, so any leak would put oil into the water rather than water into the oil.

Hi Tim.

I've considered this type of coolant heated filter also. There are obstacles, but it might work okay if thought through. My concern was that after a while, the filters paint might loosen up and come off into my coolant.

I know that sounds paranoid, but I'd never know it was even happening until I changed the filter and found a patchy looking filter where paint had come loose. Maybe the paint is okay with ethyline glycol. Worth checking out before building one.

quote:

Originally posted by rpman:
HI guys I'm looking for a heated filter that can go to 2 microns . Any ideas. So far I can see some that go to 5 but I want to make sure no bad stuff gets into my common rail IP.

I think both Donaldson and Racor make 2 micron spin on elements. I am still trying to find thread size availability.

quote:

Originally posted by Tim c cook:
Seal leaking with spin-on filter submerged in hot water -- I don't see this as being any more of a problem than any other hose-in-hose type situation.

Hi Tim,
There is no seal on a hose in hose that would allow for coolant to get in to the fuel line. If a HIH seal leaks, you just get coolant on the outside of the fuel line.

I have seen many spin of filters leak. Often from improper tightening but also from defective gaskets or hidden burrs on the end cap.

Buy the way, while the filter housing will handle 100psi easily, the filter element will rupture at a far less differential pressure from the intake to the outlet.

[/QUOTE]
I think both Donaldson and Racor make 2 micron spin on elements. I am still trying to find thread size availability.[/QUOTE]


Thanks Ron

Ed Beggs at PlantDrive.ca can sell you a Vormax with a 2 micron element.

And we've got a dealer in AUS.

Craig

Hi Tim.

Coolant spike---I wouldn't worry about the pressure difference between your fuel system and your coolant system. The coolant would be running through a ROUND tube or pipe which can handle pressure MUCH better than the FLAT sides of a FPHE. Same pressures there, no leaks reported. yet...

Many hydraulic return-to-tank filters flow inside-to-outside.

Welder -- the problem with the "spike" down the center of the filter is that anything flaking off the outside of the spike will be going on down the fuel line. This requires you to input the oil to the center of the filter rather than to the outside, this looks like it could cause the filter paper to rupture because there is no support on the outside of the paper, especially with the setup I am working on, the pump can put up to 100 pounds pressure into the filter to overcome clogging and get the maximum use out of the filter. the filters are designed for pressure to be on the outside pushing in, all the support is in the center on the inside of the paper. I cut open several filters and none had any support on the outside of the filter paper.

Another problem I found with the center heating spike is that I want to flow all the water down and back up this center spike without restricting the flow rate. I am using 5/8 heater hose throughout for the hot water, the fittings for this hose are all 1/2 inch I.D., to keep from restricting the flow I have to use at least 9/16 diameter thin wall tubing (1/2 inch conduit, still slightly restrictive) divided down the center, for the spike, to have room to get oil up past the outside of the spike dictates using filters with a one inch center opening, these cost a bit more than the ones with 3/4 inch center openings and also are not as available along the road, if the center opening is 3/4 inch I could use a chrysler engine lube oil filter in a pinch.

Why would the return-to-tank filters be connectid center-to-outside, just as easy to plumb them the other way. sure don't think they would handle much pressure without bulging and possibly tearing the internal filter paper once they started to clog even a little ?

Hi Tim. If you build your filter housing around an existing filter element that flows inside-to-outside, then how will polymerized wvo flake off the heat spike and enter the fuel stream?

The inside-out style elements are built with the support tube outside the pleated filter media to support flow/pressure. I'm not sure if there are any spin on elements that flow inside-out, but I know of about a half dozen drop-in style cartrige elements that flow inside-out.

I don't know if you have access to a lathe and TIG welder, but if you do and you want to build your own coolant heated cartrige style filter housing, let me know and I'll call Baldwin to verify micron ratings for the elements I mentioned. I've been going over the 2006 Baldwin product guide for my own project. Unfortunately the 2006 guide doesn't show the micron ratings, so somebody's gotta phone tech support. If you want the product guide, go see Grainger. That's where I got mine.

Why not just use a band heater on the outside of a regular spin-on element and either plumb in a FPHE just ahead of the oil inlet, or install a VW sandwitch style oil cooler like the Frybrid VW unit?

That way, you can warm up the oil in the element with electricity and by the time it's hot, the oil in the heat exchanger will also be hot. Then, you can shut off the band heater and just feed hot oil into the element from the HE. Since it's already full of hot oil, the elements flow will be good and since it's being fed hot oil from a HE, the electric heater will only be needed at start up.

After spending nearly $400 on my coolant heated filter project, the system I just described seems cheapest and best. Wanna buy some aluminum?

I think www.veggiefuelsystems.com sells the cutest little band heaters ever. Larry quoted me a price of $75 for the smaller model 12120 and $100 for the larger 12150 unit. This the base price for just the heater alone, no filter head and no element. I already have a Moroso remote oil filter mount and a German made VW oil cooler HE that I'm going to use.

I havent decided on what element to use yet because I want a reasonably small micron (2-10 micron absolute, not nominal) rated hydraulic element. I'm going to see Tidewater Industrial Supplies tomorrow. If you want, I'll tell you what I select so you can see if you want one too. After hearing my needs, Mike the filter guy mentioned Wix brand elements from either the 57 or 59 series. Hopefully, these will fit the bill.

I'll have to check out what the shells and reinforcement tubes are made from. The Amsoil 2 micron bypass elements that so many people are selling lately have a zinc alloy in the surface plating of the shell. Who needs the zinc reacting with wvo to form grey sludge inside a fuel filter? Not me.

If I have to, I'll buy a 10 micron reusable stainless element and build a housing to match.

Heater spike -- These DO REQUIRE the oil to flow from inside-to-outside to insure they catch anything coming off of the heater spike, as you indicate, these require a different style filter element, I want to be able to use as many different filter elements as possible, whatever is available at the time and place. Needing the special filters pretty much rules out this design of a heated filter for me.

Inside-to outside filters -- These are not going to be something that I am likely to find over a weekend day someplace along the unknown road, also got to be more costly than a standard generic filter.

Drop-in cartridge filters -- I am trying to stay away from these on the vehicle, very messy to change, especially in poor circumstances along the road. A spin-on contains most of the oil as it is removed so is MUCH cleaner.

In-to-out spin-on filters -- Have not researched the availability of these as they HAVE to more difficult and costly than a standard 10 micron spin-on hydraulic filter, deffinatly harder and more costly than a generic 30-40 micron Chrysler engine lube oil filter. I have cut open several differant spin-on filters lately, both lube oil and hydraulic, none of these had any support on the outside of the internal paper filter element.

Band heaters -- Not a big fan of these, first because of the costs involved, also, they can't output a tremendous amount of heat or they burn themselves up. they do work over time but the filters I wish to use contain one or two quarts of oil, takes a good bit of time to melt this down once the veg has solidified and cold-soaked overnight in below zero f temps.

Electric heat -- I will use this in several places in the system, pump heater block, filter head, final fuel tube before the injection pump. all these heating locatins will use standard self-limiting glow plugs as the heat source, final fuelpipe heater temp just before the injection pump will be controled with a cab-adjustable control circuit so the temp can be changed depending on the blend, filter and pump will have simple furnace-bonnet style on/off disk temp switches.

The setup I am trying to build has the filter located just after the veg lift pump, both located in the bed of the truck next to a 100 gallon transfer tank, the fuel then runs up to DO5 hydraulic selector valves in the engine compartement, through a tube-n-fin heat exchanger, made from a bullet-proof automatic transmission oil cooling heat exchanger used on early Dodge Cummins automatic transmissioned trucks.

I have taped 5/8 heater hose next to 3/8 fuel lines and covered these with home waterpipe insulation throughout. Water flow is from the pressure side of the cab heater plumbing, then through the heat exchanger for maximum final hot water fuel heating (heat exchanger mounted directly on same aluminum plate as the valves to transfer heat evenly over all these components, valves and exchanger get covered with an insulated box-type cover), back along the fuel supply line, through the filter, through the heating block mounted to the pump, through a heated pickup in the tank, then back up along the return fuel line, then back to the cab heater return plumbing. There will also be glowplug heating of the 1/4 inch pipe feeding fuel from the heat exchanger over to the injection pump. There will be a final small metal-canned throw away in-line fuel filter just prior to the injection pump to catch anything caused by all the heating along the way. The fuel pump pressure sensor and final elactric heat sensor will be located after this filter and about 3 inches before the input fitting to the injector pump. Maybe even injector line heaters eventually, don't have an acceptable design for these yet.

Interesting system, Tim. Sounds good.

I guess it leads back to the original problem though:

If you don't want to use inside-out flow style filters, then a heat spike may eventually develop polymerized wvo skin that could flake off into your fuel stream. I know you plan to add the small disposable in-line filter to catch polyveg flakes before they hit your pump, but what's stopping the polyveg from building up on the walls of your little metal filter?

Also, because the disposable filter has a metal shell, without a vaccum or pressure guage, how will you know when the little filter fills with poly veg flakes? The little glass or plastic filters can easilly be visually inspected, but the steel one can't.

I think your system should work fine. I wasn't trying to pick it apart, I was just pointing out a few areas for attention. Craig Reece once repeated a saying to me: "The perfect is the enemy of the good.". I think that any system will always have room for improvement, but eventually, good has to be called good enough. Although excellence is to be striven for, obsession isn't. I can tend to go too far on details sometimes.



Band heaters are used in industrial applications to heat 50 gallon drums of fluid. They don't just quickly burn themselves out from hard use.

Whether you choose electricity or coolant to heat your veggie filter, you will still need to wait for your engine to fully warm up before switching to veggie. This gives plenty of time for an electric band heater to get a couple quarts of oil hot. I'm not trying to push the idea of electric heated filters on you, but I'm not sure if you remember that warm up time applies both to the veggie AND the engine. Running blends isn't the same as svo. With straight veggie, heat is vital.

I know you understand svo, just offering a friendly reminder. Everyone wants to shorten warm up times, but heat is our friend.

Anyway, if you are committed to a coolant heated filter, why not just throw a few wraps of heater hose around the spin-on element. Cheap, crude, effective.

RPMAN, I just installed a Permacool filter as the veggie side filter in my Suburban conversion. It's only got 600 miles on it so far, but it's rated at 2 micron. I got the filter and head from Jegs Racing on the internet for $40, and wrapped it with 3 loops of heater hose. So far it's performing very well. You can see the "plugs" on the filter head, it has an "in" and an "out" on either side so you can mount it anywhere. I use the in and out on the other side, as you can see. After this pic, I put a temp sensor in one of the extra "out" ports.

permacool_copy.JPG (72 KB, 90 downloads)

Welder -- Small metal cased final filter -- These filters are directional, the input places the oil in contact with the inside of the metal housing only before the oil passes through the internal filter medium, the oil exits the filter directly form the inside of the filter medium, any flaking from the metal shell gets cought by the filter medium prior to the oil exiting. This filter will see both vegoil and diesel at startup and shutdown so it does not require being heated for startups in cold weather.


Vacuum/pressure guage -- There will be a sensor for this directly at the IP input and just AFTER this final filter, it is the same sensor that will control the speed of the motor on the suntec vegoil pump. The sensors output will be connected both to the fuel pump control circuitry and to a red/green bar graph on the dash. Ideally the control circuit will cause the fuel pump to make whatever amount of pressure is needed to keep 5 pounds pressure on the IP input until either of the filters becomes highly plugged, a 60 pound simple hobbs style pressure switch on the veg pump output will turn on a warning light on the dash so I know I need to change a filter before to much more time goes by.

Hose wrap -- Makes it take a lot more time to change out the filter, not good along the side of the freeway on a cold, dark, rainy night.

Band style drum heaters -- True, they also take HOURS to heat the drum, and the fluid in the drum is static and not constantly being replaced with more cool fluid.

Straight veggi -- Don't ever intend to run straight veg, I will always blend at least 10% diesel, the Cummins is direct injected, plus I have spoken to a couple commercial (lots of miles with heavy loads) cummins folks that were running 100% veg with heated systems, there were problems with plastic-like build up on the heads of the valves over time that held the valves open slightly, after pulling the head and grinding the valves they switched to a 90/10 blend and the problem went away ? Unfortunatly, running a blend even in a heated tank is a problem once the fuel in the tank cools down enough for the higher meltpoint stuff to solidify, it then drops out of solution with the diesel and ends up on the bottom of the tank -so- the tank needs an additional stirring pump to recombine everything, unfortunatly again, the entire tank needs to be liquid for this to work -so- using a heated pickup only warms the immediate oil around it quickly but will eventually completely melt the tank, faster if the tank is insulated. At least i will only be running on 100% veg until the entire tank melts. If it were easy evryone would be doing it, still developing the idea of the complete system.

Waiting for heatup -- True, but it is a short wait, I have a temp sensor on the cab heater plumbing, The water is at 100 deg f within a mile of leaving the house and is 130 to 140 deg f within 3 miles. The reason for using 5/8 ID heater hose is so I can apply a lot of that heat in a hurry to the complete system. I will have to get it all working to know just how fast I can make the switchover to veg, not really a problem as the main idea is to be able to burn veg for long hauls during the winter, during the summer I run with an unheated single tank setup and burn a 50 to 70% cold veg blend already.

Hi Tim,

I've got a couple of questions about your remarks about blending. You say: "Unfortunatly, running a blend even in a heated tank is a problem once the fuel in the tank cools down enough for the higher meltpoint stuff to solidify, it then drops out of solution with the diesel and ends up on the bottom of the tank -so- the tank needs an additional stirring pump to recombine everything"

Then you say:

"during the summer I run with an unheated single tank setup and burn a 50 to 70% cold veg blend already."

Doesn't the higher meltpoint component of the WVO in the unheated singletank setup always sit on the bottom, rather than staying in solution, and thus prevent you from really running a blend?

Ray Holan, in his book "Sliding Home" experimented with most of the common blends, and sent them off to a testing lab for viscosity testing, and while he found (and feels) that diesel and WVO (or Jet A and WVO, or kerosene and WVO, are much safer than blends with RUG or Xylol, Naptha, etc. which produce much higher (and possibly unsafe) temps when burned than diesel (or WVO)) he still found the problem that you point out in the first text I've quoted - diesel and WVO don't form a stable emulsion, and one will drop out of solution and fall to the bottom of the tank.

Certainly the "stirrer" that you propose is one solution, but not without some complexity/risk of failure.

We've found the HotFox we sell to be very effective, since it is what you describe as a heated fuel pickup - and thus you don't need to wait for the entire tank to "thaw" as with other designs that warm the entire tank and thus require more heating surface area to be effective. (And overheating the tank can, per the Beatty Report, lead to polymerization of the WVO.)

As far as the observed deposits on the valves of the Cummins, I'd think that this is happening in conversions that didn't get the WVO hot enough, and thus didn't achieve fine enough atomization to produce complete combustion and that a system that produced a final fuel temperature of 160F or higher wouldn't have those deposits and wouldn't need to blend in diesel.

Craig

Good point, John. For sure, all WVO is not created equal. Ed Beggs reports that Canola (which is pretty much all you find as WVO in Canada, the lucky dogs) will stay liquid down into the teens.

Craig

quote:

Originally posted by B.K. Hosken:
RPMAN, I just installed a Permacool filter as the veggie side filter in my Suburban conversion. It's only got 600 miles on it so far, but it's rated at 2 micron. I got the filter and head from Jegs Racing on the internet for $40, and wrapped it with 3 loops of heater hose. So far it's performing very well. You can see the "plugs" on the filter head, it has an "in" and an "out" on either side so you can mount it anywhere. I use the in and out on the other side, as you can see. After this pic, I put a temp sensor in one of the extra "out" ports.

Thanks mate. Sure beats paying 200 + for a Racor.

The nice part is it's got the same threads as Caterpillar and most other filters, so you should be able to get whatever filter you want for it.

High melt point portion of a blend always on the bottom of the tank even when liquid -- Yes, but only at first startup, my fuel system returns 2.5 times the amount of fuel that the engine burns back to the tank, newer vehicles return MANY times more, this tends to re-mix everythig over some period of running.

WVO dropping out of solution with diesel -- This is obvious once the high meltpoint stuff cools to the point of solidifying, the tiny semi-solid particals can end up on the bottom of the tank even with the vehicle setting just over a cold night, at least it has in my vehicle. One 50/50 cold blend ran fine at 24 deg F one day but didn't even get out of the parking spot the next day when the temp had fallen to 17 deg f, the vehicle started but plugged the unheated fuel filter with semi-solidified grease almost instantly.

I suspect this stratification also happens when everything is liquid but is just not obvious. The question is TIME, how long does it take the larger, heavier molecules to drop through the lighter molecules ? I suspect that in normel day-to-day operation of a moving vehicle it takes a lot longer than if the tank had no movement, don't know.

This problem is the reason I blend a bit of acetone and true gum terpentine in all my blends, they reduce surface tension and promote a much more homogenous blend. You can see the differance in the surface appearance almost instantly when these are add to any blend. The problem is that they seem to create a very small temperature break-point between the temp where everything stays liquid and the temp where the high meltpoint stuff turns solid.

WVO -- unfortunatly, WVO about anywhere in the midwest is going to be an unknown mix of everything BUT Canola. I get containers mostly indicating partially hydrogenated soy but also corn oil, soy/palm oil, etc. To my knowladge I have never gotten Canola, it is not even for sale at any of the local wholesale or retail outlets. Soy is produced at several huge mills within a 50 mile radius of my location, it is so plentiful that ADM, Central soya and the like GIVE NEW OIL AWAY to nonprofit groups like vetarans and church groups. I will try to remember to be more specific when using the turm "WVO", maybe call it "unknown blend of everthing but Canola WVO"

I have test blends on the shelf that show no visable seperation now even after 3 years undisturbed, they probably are somewhat stratified based on the size of the verious molecules by now though, it's just not visable.

Heated pickup -- I believe the "hotfox" heated pickup is a vertical unit intended to be inserted through an existing opening in the top of a tank, obviously melts oil but I suspect the vertical orientation creates only a small diameter area of convection mixing as the heat is mostly uniform from top to bottom. The SS unit I am welding up is a bit larger at 3 inches O.D, it also lays horizontally in the rear bottom of a rectangular 100 gallon farm transfer type tank. It will melt the solid oil locally but The bottom horizontal orientation should promote a good bit of convection circulation along the entire length of the unit as all the heat is located at the bottom of the tank, the locally warmed oil will tend to rise up into the cooler oil and the cooler oil will tend to fall down into the warmer oil, this, along with the injector pump's return fuel stirring may be enough stirring that I won't actually need the circulation pump, won't know til it is all working.
As I stated, I will likely be drawing a higher concentration of straight veg at first startup switchover until a larger portion of the oil turns liquid but the combination of convection stirring and fuel system return oil stirring should re-blend the oil over some amount of time, Luckily, this specific situation will only occur during first-of-the-day startups in very cold weather.

Has anyone tried these glow plug heaters (pic attached) They're thomostaticly controlled to switch off at 190f and back on at 170f also these injector heaters that wrap around your injectors on this link below.

http://www.vegiecars.com/Injector_Heater/

Warmer_sml.jpg (72 KB, 50 downloads)

Hi B.K.

I like your filter. Cheap, simple and effective. Very practical.

What's that red stuff you painted around the hose wraps? Glue or something?



Hi Tim.

I wrote a large detailed reply to your second to last post last night. Unfortunately, when I hit the "post now" button, a window opened saying the page could not be found. This post will be a little more brief.


Small metal filter---I honestly can't understand how the oil can leave the filter unit without some of it touching the shell, after passing through the filter media, but you can see the product and I can't so maybe it works as you say. If the shell is aluminum or stainless, it should be fine anyway.


Vacuum/pressure guage---Since I didn't see this mentioned inyour previous description, I assumed you didn't have one planned. Good to see you thought of it.


Band style heaters---Although I haven't verified this, I'd bet that comparing the Wattage-to-volume ratio between the drum heaters and the filter heaters would show the filter heaters to have higher intensity. Also, the filter heaters cover nearly half of the filter shells surface area, whereas the drum heater covers much less.

I know that internal convection will assist any band heaters speed of heating BUT The filter heater is not trying to heat the entire element, only the oil between the shell and pleated filter media. After all, that's where the filtration happens. The oil in the core is already clean.


Straight Veggie---A little diesel blending as insurance is reasonable. Certainly it's more environmentally friendly than going petro100%.

Thanks for the story on the big Cummins having valve deposits. Like Craig, I also wonder if it was a heat thing or a problem only avoided by blending in a little petro juice. You ended that issue with a question mark. Are you unsure of the outcome of their efforts to counter the valve deposit issue? I'd love to know how it ended.

I've got a tank design that was originally meant for svo, but after hearing about your blending challenges, I think it might be good for blends. If you (or anyone) is interested, PM me and I'll describe it to you.


Waiting for heatup---See band style heaters.


Hose wrap---I agree. Even though I've never actually used one, the heater hose wrap seems a little difficult to handle when changing filters. Small inconvenience since changing fuel filters happens relatively rarely compared to other maintenance tasks. Still, I think you do have a point. That's why I like the band heaters. Certainly they cost more than a few extra feet of hose, but the VFS units look quite easy to handle. Convenience costs, I guess.

Your comment on handling the hose wrap got me thinking. I'm imagineering a cheap cure for the handling issue you mentioned. I'll weld one up ASAP.