Recycle cooking oil in your diesel

[teamnelson]

Found out a family we know has been running their cars on used cooking oil for some time now. Didn't know that the diesel engine was designed to run on peanut oil originally. Anybody here doing that? I guess there's a bunch of folks doing it - you have to stake a claim on your local Chinese food restraunt quick.

I'm making some lanterns that burn used cooking oil too, with a coffee cup, coat hanger and sneaker lace.

[Drilling Man]

  Yes i've done it, it all depends on what diesel you have, as to how refined the oil has to be.

  DM

[teamnelson]

Have you tried it on a diesel generator? My friend filters his oil through a shirt basically, for the big floaters. Would that be sufficient to run a genny?

[Drilling Man]

  It depends on what diesel it is, and what filtering system, and also what injection pump it has.

  Fry oil has moisture in it from the cooking process.  The best way is to make bio-diesel out of it, and then you can run it in all common diesels.

  Running it filtered only, will probably be hard on the injection pump, depending on what pump it is...

  Older diesels, like a non puterized tractor will run on filtered oil (even used oil) and get along pretty good on it.  I like to mix everything like that 50-50 with diesel fuel, FILTER IT GOOD, and run it.

  A couple problems with all of this is, fry oil gets very thick in the winter, and unless you heat the tank, your diesel will probably stop running.  I don't run any "mix" in my diesels in the winter, it's only a warm weather deal for me.

  I know some folks just filter the fry oil and run it, but most of them are shortening there injuction pump life and will pay later for doing it...

  DM

[don heath]

hen gas stations stopped carrying fuel in Zimbabwe in 1999 we saw many inovations. The most common was transformer oil out of all the electricity transformers. Even modered high tech diesels run on it- (pitty it cooks the transformer!!!). Folks did try soya and sunflower oil, but only the old listers and chinese copies would run on it without gumming up the injector pump. I got a good line on condemed jet A1- dam fine stuff .

Little bio deisel 'plants' became quite common- 60l (17US gal)a day models. Bio diesel works well in most engines and my TDi landrover is happy with it, but some of the new 'common rail' motors just died! Nissan will not even guarantee the injector pumps for a month on their new Wolf trucks if used with high sulpher diesel or bio diesel!! (like there are any other options in zim?).

The problem with bio diesel is you still need chemical support to make it. Not much and you can recover most of the meths...but it isn't a long term 'survivalists' solution. Ethanol can be produced at home -with much more effort, but without outside support.

[WD45]

Most people don't know that Mr diesel designed his engine to run on peanut oil. As stated if you are going to use straight veg oil if makes a difference what kind of diesel. Mostly what kind of injection pump it has. One type will run it fine and the other type will trash out. Most people that run straight oil get older mercedes and VW diesels because the type injection pump they use will take the pressure created by the straight oil. If you want to use veggie oil in your newer diesels you need to convert it into bio diesel which will run in any diesel. If you are going to run the straight oil in colder weather you also MUST have a set up to heat the oil because no injection pump will pump solid grease There are some people that are running straight oil in newer engines but they have installed heating systems and seperate tanks for the oil to keep it thin enough not to kill the pump. I know I did not give major details here but there are several web sites out there you can get good detailed info from.  Hope this helps

[handi243]

VW engines work the best i think them things will run on the oil blow by!!!