If your vehicle operates in temperatures below 60°F or 15°C then avoid using ANY percent of transfat oil a.k.a. hydrogenated oil, animal fat or shortening in your fuel blends. Below that temperature the transfats will separate out and clog filters even when mixed with kerosene, jetA, gasoline or winter diesel.

A lot of cool weather operating problems are caused by people using very clean transfat oils which have been hot filtered down to 1µ.
This is also true with Biodiesel made from transfats. Even commercial B5 blends can cause winter problems if the BD is made from transfats.

Avoid saturated fats with this Simple VO Cleaning System

This message has been edited. Last edited by: john galt,

I had a number of drums of oil I filtered in summer and put away. I noticed a lot of them had fats settle out in the cooler months. At first I was pumping the clear oil off the top but also noticed the fats which had been filtered to 5Um were still perfectly liquid. I put a drum of this fuel in the car ( I use 25L drums as my fuel tanks so the drum was put in un-agitated with the still visibly settled line of fat) and of course the pickup was right in the fat layer.

I could see the fat going through the clear sections of fuel line with no problem and the car ran very well and certainly confirmed what I have read before that fats have more power than oil.
My experience is if the fat is still liquid and you are warming your fuel before the filters, you should have no problem at very least on a 2 tank system where the system can be purged.
The oil I refer to was cold filtered but the ambient temps may have been as much as 20Oc higher when filtered than when the oil was used, but it was not heated as such prior to filtering.

I now shake any drums of settled fats up and check there are no solid lumps on the bottom which I have yet to find. As long as the fats will flow and are suspended in the oil, I have had no problems whatsoever.

I have found that the addition of just 5% RUG increases the gel point and dissolves fats significantly but concede this may depend the specific fats in question.
I think it depends on the fats in question and everyone should test their own oil in the conditions relevant to them.

A friend recently made some Bio out of what we believe may have been pure hydrogenated oil and found a high percentage of the resulting Bio still dropped out and gelled at 17oC.
He is going to reprocess a test batch to see if this oil required more KOH or meth than indicated or the stuff just has a very high gel point no matter how high the conversion.

DCS - Do you have any type of filters in the veg fuel line on the vehicle? My experance using cold blends is that the milky colored, but still flowing fats, will go through the fuel lines ok but almost instantly clog an unheated filter. I have to remove the throwaway inline fuel filter in the veg line once the temps start getting down below the 60 deg F temps even though I blend in an ounce of true gum turpentine and an ounce of acetone for every 5 gallons of blend.

Hi Guys,

How would I know if my filtered have fats in them?
The grease I'm getting is Trans Fat free but is used to fry chicken.

I've cleaned my first barrel a few times, does the look like wet tan or brown bread? When I try to hose it out, it floats to the top. Is that fat or like breading mix?

sounds like fat, just like when you put real chicken soup in the fridge and the fat settles to the top, fat is lighter than water but more heavy than oil

quote:

How would I know if my filtered have fats in them?

put a sample in the fridge, the 'fats' will separate out

Fat is oil. Just from an animal source. There is no real difference, other than the normal differences between oil types like chain composition.

Fat in filter -- Cut open a clogged filter, if there is a thin layer of off-white or light brown greasy stuff coating the paper element it is solidifies fats. This layer only needs to be less than 1/32 inch thick to stop fuel flow.

quote:

Fat in filter -- Cut open a clogged filter, if there is a thin layer of off-white or light brown greasy stuff coating the paper element it is solidifies fats. This layer only needs to be less than 1/32 inch thick to stop fuel flow.

So far no clogged fuel filter, knock on wood! Been using Firemediceric's filtering system techniques,
but I'm still a baby on this journey.

I have the one place where I get most of my grease from, put it in a big cooking pot & I siphon it out by hand with a boat bilge hand pump from the top. I don't take the nasty stuff on the bottom, but I do empty it out for him so that I will be starting with a clean pot for the next time.

It sits in those cubies for months till I need it.

Thanks, now I know what to look for, Dave

quote:

Originally posted by Tim c cook:
DCS - Do you have any type of filters in the veg fuel line on the vehicle? My experance using cold blends is that the milky colored, but still flowing fats, will go through the fuel lines ok but almost instantly clog an unheated filter. I have to remove the throwaway inline fuel filter in the veg line once the temps start getting down below the 60 deg F temps even though I blend in an ounce of true gum turpentine and an ounce of acetone for every 5 gallons of blend.

Tim,
I heat my fuel prior to it going through a disposeable inline filter. With blended fats I have found that there is enough oil in the mix to allow the engine to get hot enough to melt the fats before the filter clogs. I am not running pure fats, rather fat content up to about 30% in clear oil.In tests I have done refrigerating fatty oils, I found the addition of just 5% RUG mage a huge difference to the amount of fats that would dissolve in the oil and the subsequent gel point.

I also have a 2 tank setup and I run both the start up bio and the WVO through the original fuel lines and the same filters. I have my 6 port valve located in the boot of the car so all it does is change tanks rather than what a lot of people here anyway do, which is run 2 seperate fuel systems from the tanks forward.

When it comes to fats, I have coined the motto " For SVO purposes, the only differences between fats and oils is temprature."

To this end, it has been my experience that if you can heat your fuel enough to melt the fats before the filter completely blocks, that is all you need to worry about. If one were running very fatty oil, a glowplug in the fuel line before the filter should help keep the filter flowing until the coolant HE kicks in.

DCS,

How long after the initial diesel start up, do you wait until you switch from dino to your alternative fuel?

Dave

Hi Dave,

I'm not sure wether to bore you with all my ideas and theroys on this or not.

Simple answer is I wait till the engine reaches operating temp...Or at least that is what I suggest you do.

I know about how long it takes for all the lines and extra hoses to be purged so I often flip the switch ( depending on the traffic) as early as about mid way to operating temp on the gauge. I figure by the time the Oil gets there and actually into the pump, the engine is up to heat.

My car has the rugged inline type pump and on a good day I can start from dead cold on oil so the heat isn't needed by the pump itself But I don't believe the injectors would handle cold oil magnitudes thicker than the fuel they were designed for as well as the pump.

I have put a water injection system on my car and have faith that this gives me some insurance against all the claimed maladays of ring coking and other gloom and doom by switching too early.
If I didn't have this, I would wait till at least the car was at operating temp. I pulled a glow plug last week and the only carbon on the base could be brushed off with the slightest touch so I believe the water is keeping my engine buildup free despite my changeover practices that I wouldn't reccomend to others.

On my merc, I have observed that the coolant temp comes up to heat waaay faster than anything else. Even when you heat your fuel, it still has to go through cold main filters and injector pumps which take a lot longer to heat than the coolant even with hot oil running through them.

Many people here anyway heat their oil twice, once before the filters to stop any fats clogging them and reduce the load on the fuel pump trying to pull thick oil through the restrictive filters and heat it again directly before the IP to ensure it is up to heat.

I think that the proper time for changeover is when the IP and the engine block are up to heat which takes a lot longer than just the coolant getting hot. I have mentioned this before and people Disagree it would make any difference siteing the fact the cylinder walls would be hot before the coolant. I think there is a lot more to it but you can make your own decision.
I believe most people change over when the coolant is up to temp and seem to have no problems so if it works, I guess that is all you need to do!

On an average, not cold, not hot day, I can shut my engine off for 2 hours and start it with no trouble on oil. In colder weather It Might need the glow plugs to speed things up but even in winter here, at the 1 hour mark I can just hit the key without the plugs and it will go straight away.
If I know I am going to be leaveing the car for only a short while, which depends on ambient temps, I don't switch back at all.

Thanks DCS,

For the detailed explanation, not boring at all.
As stated in your last paragraph, I'm pretty much doing that. Being as the temps are going to get cooler here in the next few weeks, I just wanted to be safe rather than sorry.

Are you running two heaters or just your own HE?

Thanks again,
Dave

Hi David,

At the present time I am just Running my own HE before the inline Filter. The HE is just a piece of 3/4' Steel pipe with about 3 ft. of 1/4" copper pipe Wrapped and soldered to the steel Pipe.

I keep thinking about making a 3 pass HE out of something like 2" pipe So there is a Pre heating circuit for the fuel before the filters, a main circuit to reheat the fuel before the IP and an after circuit for the return fuel to warm the fuel tank to melt any fats that may fall out or end up in the tank.

After planing this out in my head I come back to the simple thought of " Why bother?"
My car runs flawlessly just as it is so I have no reason to add a multitude of possible leak and failure points to an already perfectly serviceable system.

If a person lived in much colder climates and wanted to use at least a percentage of fats in their oil, a multipass HE or multiple HE's could be a very handy thing to use. On the return line, the oil is never going to be real hot by the time it gets back to the tank but it only needs to be warmed to around 40oC to melt any fats I have come across. As long as the proportion of fats is low enough to allow enough fuel to the engine to allow it to warm up, with a HE fitted before the filters a fatty blend is perfectly useable.

What I believe is best for fatty oil, (As against running pure fats) is a 2 tank system. I held off doing this for a long while after reading about adding extra fuel lines, filters and all sorts of complication but it dosen't have to be that way. I had already fitted my HE when I was running blends which was a pretty simple exercise. To do my conversion, all I did was add a 6 port valve in the boot and an extra Cubie for start up Bio.

I use the same filters for the whole fuel system which is just a disposeable inline before the stock MB spin on filter. This has proven perfectly adequate because if you put clean oil in your tank in the first place, there is little required of the filters anyway.

The thing about running extra lines and fuel circuits in case something goes wrong and you have a backup to get home or whatever was too much of a complication for me. What can go wrong? A blocked filter? I carry spares with me and when the single occasion an inline blocked badly enough that I didn't want to drive home on it, I changed it by the roadside in literally 2 minutes. Contrary to what some people say, in my experience on my car, you know a filter is coming up for a change and they don't just switch off without warning. I run the original fuel lines and again have had no problems doing this.

It is my experience that overall people in the veg world completely over complicate things. For some people, going to a LOT of extra trouble may be nessacary depending on their circumstances but for a lot of other people, much simpler systems can be used without compromising reliability or effectiveness in any way.

quote:

It is my experience that overall people in the veg world completely over complicate things. For some people, going to a LOT of extra trouble may be nessacary depending on their circumstances but for a lot of other people, much simpler systems can be used without compromising reliability or effectiveness in any way.

What DSC states above is very true and initially one of the most frustrating hurdles I found to get over. A big part of this problem are the companies selling idiot proof conversion kits that claim that their conversions are the best and only safe way to go. Thanks to these snake oil salesmen there is more disinformation out there than information. Discerning between the two is where the challenge lies.

I'll stick with no convertion and just run my 15 cent blend and be happy as a clam or is that .15 clams? why add things to go wrong? there are already enough things that can go wrong on their own!!

I'll 2nd that. I run a clear canola blend adjusted with temperature that significantly reduces tailpipe pollution. No vehicle conversion necessary. No expensive complicated chemical conversion reactor needed. KeepItSimple

Murphy's Law:
"Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong, at the least convenient moment"
Murphy Lives North of 60°

KeepItSimple, I like that, just keep it simple! how much snow you got up there john?

Plenty in the mountains already, about 2" that comes and goes here at 2500' when it gets below freezing at night and snows and warms into the 40s when it's sunny. Nice time of year - no bugs!!!

sounds great, I hate bugs! no snow here probibly till after Christmas, haven't even seen frost yet! but the fall colors are beautiful veg is staring to thicken, no more liquified shortning or peanut oil till spring!