[Vwdiesel] Burning Crankcase Oil (Val Christian)

[Keith Family]

I have burned waste crankcase oil in the 1980 Rabbit Diesel I 
owned back at that timeframe.  I did it only once.  The resultant 
purchase of a new diesel fuel filter for at the time $18 (which 
exceeded the cost of a full tank diesel fill up) seemed counter 
productive.  I'm not sure I would do it in my current 03 Golf TDI 
since fuel filters have hardly gotten cheaper in the interim and 
if anything, the car generally is more finicky and "precise" than 
the Rabbit was.

Instead I elected to go in another direction.  Contrary to a lot 
of perceptions, burning waste crankcase oil on site is in fact 
endorsed by the EPA since they view the clean efficient 
combustion of oil preferable to spilling in transport even one 
tanker truck full of waste oil headed to the recycler.  They 
throw out numbers of one drop of oil can contaminate 10000 
gallons of water or similar to justify their stand.

And if you think of it, the minor heavy metal contamination of 
waste oil is severely overshadowed by the contamination by carbon 
as "blow by" to the combustion process.  The oil may look dirty 
and in fact it is but primarily with particulate carbon - 
especially for diesel engine waste oil.

The farm where I worked had 12 diesel powered tractors (up to and 
including an IHC 3588) and elected NOT to burn or fuel dispose of 
their waste oil.  With tractor fuel filters running upwards of 
$25 each, the farm would rather not gamble operability of a 
tractor on the marginal cost savings of burning their waste oil. 
Instead the waste oil is donated to the town who does have a 
commercial waste oil burning system in the town barn and is 
always pleased to receive more grist for their mill.

I've always had a personal interest in alternate energy schemes. 
I've tried burning waste oil in both the Mother Earth News (MEN) 
waste oil burner and the revised version by Roger Sanders shown 
at 
http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel_library/ethanol_motherearth/me4.html. 
The downside to both of these is that oil and air must both be 
precisely "metered" to support combustion properly.  Too much air 
and combustion is too cold to occur properly and can "blow" out. 
Too little air and you get smoking.  These are stove for those 
who like to "tinker" literally.  Almost constant attendance is 
required to keep the thing on an even combustion keel.

Others have converted #2 oil burners to burn waste oil and 
generally these conversions are more successful but typically 
involve an air atomising Delavan nozzle and preheated/metered 
oil.  Various versions of these can be seen at 
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/wastewatts/ but you have to join to 
see the messages.   The downside of this methodology of waste oil 
burning is the large amount of "support" necessary to make 
efficient burning of waste oil possible.  (It's not unusual for 
nearly a thousand watts of electrical support energy to be 
required between, burner motor, oil heater, nozzle preheater, and 
controls - all this for perhaps 100K btu per hour heat output.)

And of course there are the multitude of "online" instructions 
available for a fee including Ebay, Heco, Benjamin Little Dragon 
and some others.

Or you can bite the bullet and buy a full fledged waste oil 
burner from Lanair, Econoheat or a bunch of others.

Best I can say for myself now nearly 20 years after my first 
efforts in this direction is that burning of waste oil continues 
to be an ongoing experiment usually undertaken when the woodpile 
begins to show the effect of a cold winter.

Best,
Joe