So... at http://www.plantdrive.com/page50/16/16.html

There is this bold statement, which duly cautions users to obtain the best oil possible, settle out free water, etc.

A friend of mine with a 6.0L Ford is a touring musician, and basically lives on the road where he doesn't have real estate he can dedicate to settling tanks.

I'm wondering a few things: I realize that he should try to get the best-possible liquid oil, but is there a good rule of thumb that he could use to avoid damage to his fuel pump and injectors? Could he titrate a sample of oil before he picks it up, and if it titrates below 2g NaOH/L of oil, would that be "good enough" to avoid damage? Or is that just titrating the FFA, which wouldn't damage metal anyway...only the waterborne acids?

Sorry...hopefully my question isn't too rambling.

It is not usually the water born acids that "etch" the internals of an IP on wvo. It is the water itself creating an effect called cavitation. A search of the archives here will bring up serveral discussions and links on this.

Cavitation is caused by very small amounts of water in fuel. Essentially this means that your friend is probably going to eventually have problemes with it since he cannot dewater on the road. He is probably just going to have to accept that as part of the costs of using wvo without properly dewatering it.

Thanks, Dana. Is it possible, then, that a good spinning filter would be able to sufficiently dewater the WVO? Particularly since I was thinking of designing a tank pickup that floated, so he was pulling from near the surface of the WVO in the tank rather than the bottom...

quote:

Originally posted by danalinscott:
It is not usually the water born acids that "etch" the internals of an IP on wvo. It is the water itself creating an effect called cavitation. A search of the archives here will bring up serveral discussions and links on this.

Cavitation is caused by very small amounts of water in fuel. Essentially this means that your friend is probably going to eventually have problemes with it since he cannot dewater on the road. He is probably just going to have to accept that as part of the costs of using wvo without properly dewatering it.

quote:

Originally posted by greiswig:
... Is it possible, then, that a good spinning filter...

Hey George it is great to see you on here!!! You came to the best place for getting meaningfull info on WVO. What your asking info on is basically the holy grail that a few of us are seeking. Me for one cause Im plan to run my dieselized 404 on the stuff while traveling cross country to strange events. I think you are a little familure with the strange events Im thinking about. Like say the crazy one they call Mogfest LOL. (Im in FL)

Anyway... at this moment in time there is not YET a way figured out to dewater totaly on the road. In fact a total on the road filtering system is still little iffy. The most successfull ones have actually been those who stopped and camped out long enough to pull out all their supplies (pots, pans, buckets, filters, LP fired boilers etc.) and do full stationary detailed filter/dewater arrangement almost like they would at home. They usually boiled out the water. Which of course doesn't solve the water born acid problems.

You see, there are two things that one shoots for when dewatering. One is the removing of soluable acids, sugars, salts etc. This part is what settling out water can accomplish best. The other goal; as you know, is to remove micro sized water droplets to protect the IP from cavitation damage.

Sooo.. how do you settle on the road...well looks like you cant? Maybee the spinning filters with an EXTRMELY FAST pump to jam it thru there at greater spin speeds, coupled with (flame suit on) something like accusorb beads, will solve the issue of the removing enough water to reduce/elimintat the acids, sugars etc. This is not yet been long term tested. Then as you can surmize there is the issue of removing the last bit of water to protect the IP. Here you could try boiling it out? (w/heat or vacuum or both) but this brings up the danger of possibly automizing some of the oil by mistake and creating fire danger.

Yep its all pretty complicated.

Hey, Coach! Good to hear from you. I hope to be at Mogfest this year, but won't have the turbo installed in the Mog yet. I'm usually over on the biodiesel side of things, since that's what I run my rigs on.

Anyhoo, thanks for the info. I should have known it would be complicated. I'd read elsewhere that evaporating the water got rid of water-born acids, which didn't make sense to me. You just confirmed that, I think. Looks like I'm going to have to put accusorb into the search engine, though...