Hi, I am new to this and would like some solid advice. I am considering running BD in my Forced hot air heating system and have been reading a lot of info but much of it seems quite different. My heating oil guy said you can run petro diesel as oil in a heating system without any problem so I was wondering why all the considerations for running BD?

My basement is never colder than 50 F. I have a Beckett burner for forced hot air and a Carlin for hot water. I now have 200 gallons of HHO in the tank and was considering just putting BD in there as I made it to top it off, but now I think I may tee in a 55 gallon drum with a HHO and BD mix with separate filter.

I read somewhere that the best you can do it with 20% BD and then another place that you can run 20% SVO in HHO to me this makes no sense to process BD if you can run SVO in the same proportion.

My biggest concern is that the system be reliable and I don't damage anything.

Any best practices for this?

Any help much appreciated.

Thanks! Sean

86Golf;

You talk of BD and SVO. These will not behave the same in a Beckett as is.
I asked the question over at AltFurnace about simply substituting HHO for B100 and was told that should not create any problems. I'll know in a couple months when we get the farm greenhouse boiler up and runnig.
Others have doen exactly what tyou asked about, simply top off the HHo tank with homebrew, again no problems reported.
Running a 200 litre drum parallel is redundant and doesn't accomplish any more than tossing the BD directly into the HHO tank.
One thing you could do is remove the burner and attach the fuel line to a source of BD and hit the "on" button. Don't be standing in front of it when you do or have anything flamable around either. We will be doing this to adjust fuel/air before installing it permanently into the boiler.
There may come a time when seals are an issue, however I've only heard of a few instances of that happening and it is not clear if it was due to the fuel or just wearing out.
These ideas are not from personal experience but from information Ihave gathered on this subject.

I am running B100 in my Beckett right now,only problem I have had so far is the nozzle and electrodes got gummed up and produced a no start, I changed the nozzle and cleaned the electrodes and it's working fine again, I believe that the bio loosened up some dino and caused this but we shall see

Golf,

Seems to me you have 3 problems to be concerned with.
1. Viscosity
While the difference between BD and HHO is minimal, if you attempt anything with SVO, you're going to run into a problem because it is so much thicker..

2. Flash Point
The flash point of HHO is very low.. Dont quote me but I think petro oil flashes around 150 degF or so.. Biodiesel's flash point is 3 times higher and veg oil is above 500 degF. The problem this creates is one of ignition reliability. I've read that this is only a very minor problem with biodiesel but a major pain and almost impossible with SVO.

3. Material Compatability.
You need to make sure your solinoid valve isnt going to start leaking because the biodiesel dissolved all the rubber seals. As I understand it, the some of the standard suntec oil pumps have been tested with some lower level blends of biodiesel (B20?) and they worked fine.

So, to sum it all up, If you mix in 20% of anything into your HHO tank, you shouldnt have much of a problem because the HHO will ignite it.. But trying to run alternative fuels at high ratios or 100% straight is going to create problems.. The biggest is ignition.

Hope this helps you,

Hey guys, I have been running B-100 in my becket for about 5weeks. The tank is outside and the temps have been in the high teens this week. I have had no problems to date. I expect to have to reduce the bio content as the winter gets colder. I have a second unit (outside too)that has been burning bio and wvo as a secondary fuel. Compuheat and the wvo gelled from the heated tank to the burner. I ran heated water lines along side the fuel lines and insulated them and things have worked OK.
I started a thread about this before. I hope it helps. DGF

Did you make any modifications to the burners to burn the B100 or Vo??

Thanks!
Sean

I see a lot of beckett burners on ebay at a reasonable price.Is there anything i could mount these to to heat my garage?

quote:

Originally posted by Tiger744:
I see a lot of beckett burners on ebay at a reasonable price.Is there anything i could mount these to to heat my garage?

You got an old wood stove ? Cut an opening for the barrel and you now have a furnace. Stick a pot of water on top and it will never be dry in there. Tentatively you could use an old water heater to do the same thing with, although you might have to do something about the back wall of it where the flame will hit. Opinions and ideas.
Essentially all a boiler is is a tube with fire brick in the pot and a water jacket fed by heat exchangers and a pump to circulate the water.
A furnace is simper yet and uses a fan to move the heated air around where a pump would be used to move water in a boiler.
Advantage of a boiler is the potential for underground radiant heat for heated floors or, in our case, a greenhouse.

Does it need to be vented to the outside like a gas or wood heater?

quote:

Originally posted by Tiger744:
Does it need to be vented to the outside like a gas or wood heater?

Yes.

quote:

Originally posted by Legal Eagle:

quote:

Originally posted by Tiger744:
I see a lot of beckett burners on ebay at a reasonable price.Is there anything i could mount these to to heat my garage?

You got an old wood stove ? Cut an opening for the barrel and you now have a furnace. Stick a pot of water on top and it will never be dry in there. Tentatively you could use an old water heater to do the same thing with, although you might have to do something about the back wall of it where the flame will hit. Opinions and ideas.
Essentially all a boiler is is a tube with fire brick in the pot and a water jacket fed by heat exchangers and a pump to circulate the water.
A furnace is simper yet and uses a fan to move the heated air around where a pump would be used to move water in a boiler.
Advantage of a boiler is the potential for underground radiant heat for heated floors or, in our case, a greenhouse.

Legal,
An oil fired boiler gun would probably burn a hole through a wood stove without any refactory in place..

quote:

Legal,
An oil fired boiler gun would probably burn a hole through a wood stove without any refactory in place..

Through a cast iron stove ? Really ? Wow ! I was thinking of the one in my reactor house, cast iron with heat bricks (?) inside, not the flimsy ones made of stamped steel.
Does that make a difference ?

Ok guys thanks for the advice, now remember these units are in my house and I use them everyday. It is Winter and I really don't wanna do any experimenting now come Summer maybe I'll buy an old burner and play, but I have many other projects and I don't need this one to jump to number one cause I have no heat or hot water, or have to try and figure out where to store the contaminated HHO if I contaminate my 275 gallon HHO tank.

So the bottom line questions are:

1- What percentage VO can I use with HHO without having to change any current settings or have any reliability issues?

2- Can I pump that VO directly into the tank thru the regular inlet or does it have to be blended with HHO or something else first?

3 - What percentage B100 can I use with HHO without having to change any current settings or have any reliability issues?

4- Can I pump B100 directly into the tank thru the regular inlet or does it have to be blended with HHO or something else first?

Thanks for all the help!
Sean

1&2: I would say none.

3 : 20% seems to be universally acepted as all around safe

4 : Toss it in just before the delivery guy gets there (if you know the schedule)

Great 20% DB it is!

Thanks for the info!

Only problem is I only get one delivery a season and I already got it so my options are I just top off the tank with BD or do I go over to my oil guy's place pump some HHO into a drum take it home and mix in the BD in another drum before adding it to my HHO tank in the bsmt.
Choice two is a pain in the butt!

What do you think??

Thanks!

I would just toss it in on top of what is already there.
You said your basement never gets below 10C, right? Now the question is what type oil feedstock is your BD made from ? I would venture to say that anything other than perhaps solid animal tallow (lard) should be fine, although there is one nagging potential that one thread brought out and that is the precipitate (see "dreaded white suff" in the search) when blending BD and diesel. HHO is essentially that, diesel. My experience does not show this to be a problem with the oil I am using, a liquid canola, although it may with the other type, a partly hydrogenated oil. A cold test would definetly be in order though as you are using this as your main heat source and you can never be too careful. Cold sucks.
Make a 20% blend, let it sit for a few days and then toss it in the freezer to see how cold it will go before geling. Then when it thaws back out check the bottom to see if there is any precipitate that could potentially clog the filter.
Of course all of this at B20 is probably unnnecessary. I am erring on the side of extreme caution view your situation and application.
Others have had considrable experience with this kind of blend for HH and could offer better info on it if they care to chime in.

quote:

Originally posted by Legal Eagle:

quote:

Legal,
An oil fired boiler gun would probably burn a hole through a wood stove without any refactory in place..

Through a cast iron stove ? Really ? Wow ! I was thinking of the one in my reactor house, cast iron with heat bricks (?) inside, not the flimsy ones made of stamped steel.
Does that make a difference ?

Ya, cast iron is a different story.. There arent many of those around anymore.. Most stoves I see are just welded, bent plate steel...

quote:

Originally posted by Legal Eagle:
1&2: I would say none.

3 : 20% seems to be universally acepted as all around safe

4 : Toss it in just before the delivery guy gets there (if you know the schedule)

I would highly recommend against tossing BD in your hho tank. BD will loosen up the sludge in your tank and clog the filter and possibly the nozzle. And if there are any running problems with the mix, you have a big tank of questional fuel to deal with. Better to use a separate tank for the mix and use a 2 way ball valve for the 2 tanks. This way you can quickly switch tanks if there are any problems.

Womens Nylons make great filters...

quote:

Originally posted by Murphy:
Womens Nylons make great filters...

Yep, for the visible stuff anyway. I use a rubber band to tie a piece of the nylon stocking to the discharge wand of my vac sucker and after pumping out the tank, I pull off the sock and end up with a small wad of food particles neatly wrapped by the nylon sock and just chuck it.