I don't think it is just the size of the drops that matters.
I have seen oil that looked clear and was without and free water that was obviously very moisture laden when tested in a hot pan. I think some people have the mindset ( as I once did) that dissolved water is always just a minimal amount and therefore unlikely to do any damage.
From the tests I have done, dissolved water can amount to quite a bit of the overall oil volume and is not always a minimal or what I would think is a safe amount.

If oil that is wet were left in virtually any part of a fuel system, I have little doubt it could cause corrosion problems particularly in the IP and injectors. It would also seem possible to me that under the heat and pressure cause by the Heat exchanger,IP and/ or injectors, this dissolved water may encounter factors that cause the micro droplets to form much larger droplets that become free water. While this may or may not potentially happen, I see it as a possible danger best avoided.

Water sure as heck dosen't hurt your engine, I have been spraying water into mine at the rate of about 10% of the over all fuel I use for a year now. The problem with water is it has great potential to reek expensive havoc on your entire fuel system!

A number of people have had problems with the formation of significant rubbish in their fuel tanks. From what I have learned of this, it seems that water is essential for its formation. Like fire, take away one element of the triangle and it dosen't happen... Or at worst the chances of it happening are extremely reduced.

I have a setup that I dry all my oil through as a matter of course and takes very little effort and time on my part. To me, this little extra step in my oil processing is well worth the peace of mind I get from being able to eliminate water in my fuel as a potential cause of any problems I may come up against in the future.

Just a follow up on freezing I froze and defrosted 4 times with a control no water dropped out in either bottle.

quote:

It would also seem possible to me that under the heat and pressure cause by the Heat exchanger,IP and/ or injectors, this dissolved water may encounter factors that cause the micro droplets to form much larger droplets that become free water. While this may or may not potentially happen, I see it as a possible danger best avoided.

Good point. Safely suspended tiny micro-droplets may settle overnight in an IP or injectors to form small slugs of free water. Not much problem in a purged 2 tank svo system, but in a single tank it might be a different story.

Have you heard about the Japanese researchers burning fuel that contained 30% water?

I've heard of the experiment, but never really looked into it.

quote:

Originally posted by welder:
Have you heard about the Japanese researchers burning fuel that contained 30% water?

I've heard of the experiment, but never really looked into it.

CAT did a similar exp. it is linked to here somewhere.

quote:

Originally posted by mobetta:

quote:

Originally posted by welder:
Have you heard about the Japanese researchers burning fuel that contained 30% water?

I've heard of the experiment, but never really looked into it.

CAT did a similar exp. it is linked to here somewhere.

Yep Mobetta we had a long long discussion on it. I use to live by the place in Sparks NV where one of the researches was working on it.

Fuel works apparently is not an issue. If I remember right the way the story went was it was not being fully disclosed about damaged the water was causing along the way to the injectors. Cavitation issues in the IP's? Hints in the literature and some claimed discussions with the researches was there was an impression left that damage had happened. But nothing specific leaked out. So who knows.

It has been discussed here a good bit. Would be best to pull up the old threads on it and add to that if you want to discuss it further. Let's not take this thread further off topic.

Hi Welder,

My opinion is dissolved water won't harm your engine while it is still dissolved. Under some conditions some of the water can become suspended water which could damage your engine.

One way to think about water in oil is to compare it to water in air. Up to a point (the dew point or 100% relative humidity) water dissolves in air. The air is still clear. Past that point fog forms (suspended water). As long as the water particles are small enough, Brownian motion will keep the water particles suspended. Given enough time, the tiny water droplets will collide with each other forming fewer but larger droplets that will eventually fall down as rain ("Free Water").

The transision from suspended water to free water is much less defined than the transision from fog to rain because of the viscosity of oil being so much higher than air (or diesel fuel for that mater) and the shear amount of time for a small droplet to fall.

Just like air, more water can be dissolved into oil at higher temperatures. That is why I heat my oil up just enough to allow for proper settling and no more to reduce the amount of dissolved water that the oil can hold.

I figure that if the oil only contains dissolved water and a very minimal amount of suspended water, the little amount of suspended water will dissolve back into the oil as it is heated up before the IP.

-Ron

quote:

Originally posted by welder:

quote:

dissolved water doesn't hurt your engine, free water does.

I know some may contest your statement, but I've heard it a few times before, so it may be perfectly accurate.

I'm guessing that if the droplets are small enough, they won't have enough expansion capacity to cavitate steel from the IP.

quote:

has been discussed here a good bit. Would be best to pull up the old threads on it and add to that if you want to discuss it further. Let's not take this thread further off topic.

Sorry, George. Suspended water tolerance is a related sub topic of WVO refinement, but I guess it does deserve a seperate thread.

Ron, I neither agree, nor dissagree as I have no direct knowledge or wrote learning on the subject, only a slight passing knowledge.

If it's true that researchers witheld data (AKA lied)I think it would be cool for someone to run new experiments. Unfortunately, I don't think anyone wants to risk an IP to find out the finer points of truth on the subject. There may be some safe low-end threshhold where cavitation doesn't occur. Perhaps it still occurs below that, but is so slight as to be practically immeasurable in the confines of short-term testing on a limited budget.

Nevertheless, let's leave that to another thread.

I gotta run to work. Do you (or does anyone else) have time to dig up pertinant existing threads?

dew point is the saturation point of water in air. and because saturation point increases with temperature, that means that when oil is hot and exposed to air it will absorb the humidity out of the air and when oil cools, some moisture may evaporate off but some can remain in the oil as tiny drops of free water.

i started my upflow system today. we will see if it passes the pan test in about 4 weeks.

i dont think i will be able to use this system though. if i have to let the oil settle a year, i will need about 3000 gallons on my property at all times.
thats about 56, 55 gallon drums, or 600 cubies. i think the neighbors might notice. and storing 3000 gallons of anything, even water, has to be illegal.

but, if this works, i will try adding heat to dewater, the way "Ron Schroeder" does it.

quote:

Why would you have to let it settle for a year?

i was referring to settling time before it enters the upflow system.
sorry for the confusion.

i thought you said you let the oil settle, in cubies ,over the winter.

i am going to go back and make sure i read that part right.

my point is, if i have to let the oil settle for 1 year before i put it into the upflow system, i wont be able to use this system, whether it works or not.

and yes. oil was fry pan tested first. it failed.

i stand corrected in believing you said it had to settle in cubies for one year before entering the upflow system.
i was not able to find that statement in this thread.
i must have got that idea from your "freezing over winter helps it to dewater" discussions.

Preliminary results with upflow processing test in 3x 5 gallon pails. Dirty oil through 100 mesh screen, then slowly introduced to the bottom of 5 gallon pails overnight. 'A' was half full of store bought distilled water. 'B' was distilled water loaded with a pound of dissolved table salt. 'C' was a dilute 70% alcohol/water mix. Theory is that suspended and emulsified water in the oil will be separated out on passage as a stream through water. Salt and Alcohol were used for both their affinity for water and as an antimicrobial. Initial results after 24 hours: A showed good clarity but incomplete separation, and showed a few micro bubbles in the pan test. B showed good clarity and separation and passed pan test with no visible micro bubbles. C was a dismal soup and didn't bother with pan test. Will let all 3 sit for a week and see what happens.

The alcohol holds water, and allows it to mix with the oil. That's how it "dries" out your gasser's fuel tank, it holds the water insuspension within the alcohol, and as such lets it mix with the gas and get burned in the engine. We don't want to do that with fuel before dewatering.

quote:

Originally posted by B.K. Hosken:
The alcohol holds water, and allows it to mix with the oil. That's how it "dries" out your gasser's fuel tank, it holds the water insuspension within the alcohol, and as such lets it mix with the gas and get burned in the engine. We don't want to do that with diesels.

Sorry to say, but i find your statement very strange.
The whole trucking business does use methyl alcohol , so do all farmers in winter time.
And the patented SCHUR Mix uses alcohol, too.

May you help me to understand your statement ?

BMW Fan

What I meant is you don't want to use alcohol in a water/WVO mix...sorry, I should have wrote that more clearly, I got lost in my train of thought. I will edit the above statement. If you want to add alcohol, do it in already dewatered WVO or fuel. Otherwise you're just adding more water to the WVO, because the alcohol will hold the water in emulsion with the WVO.

If you have a little water in the bottom of a fuel tank of diesel, you can add the alcohol to it to get it to move through the fuel system and be burned, but if you want to separate the water (as in settling WVO) you DON'T want to add alcohol first. Does that make sense?

Thanks !

BMW Fan

quote:

Originally posted by Burbarian:
Preliminary results with upflow processing test in 3x 5 gallon pails. Dirty oil through...

If you have not done so already please pan test a few samples of the dirty oil your using after going thru the 100 mesh screen but before any upflow settling. This is needed to have a good comparison to analyze results against.

John Galt, I have been thinking and thinking about this system, and I have an addition that MAY work for some people. My problem was all my barrels now have a 16" hole cut in the top, so I can pour into them. For your system, they have to be a sealed drum. I have figured out a way to use an UNsealed barrel, and it's the same way a wet/dry saltwater fish tank filter works. Basically there's a container INSIDE the filter bag hanger, and there's a slot cut into the side (or a hole). As long as the feed hose from the first barrel is full of oil and has a good siphon, as you pour into the first barrel, the siphon will allow it to go to the second barrel, and the small hanging container will keep it from losing siphon. The level of oil in the first barrel will control the level in the small hanging container. If you raise the small container, the first barrel will overflow as you add oil. If you lower it, the level in the first barrel will drop to match it. See attachment...crudely drawn but I'm not good with computer graphics...

Hi B.K.,

Even simpler is to install an overflow to your second tank on the side near the top of the upflow settling drum. If you install the overflow outlet about 5 inches below the top, you can add a little more than 5 gallons at a time to the upflow drum without overflowing the top.

Oh. DUH...I guess I have been thinking too hard. I will just put a couple 4x4s under the feed barrel and let it overflow into the "finish" barrel. Very good idea. Only part of that I don't like is you are counting on a bulkhead seal on the side of the barrel to keep a seal. If you use the siphon method, if a seal fails, you don't get any leakage. Where d you get the bulkhead fittings for your version?