What do you do with your used diesel oil besides bring it to a recycler?
 

I was wondering if any of you do something with the old diesel oil besides bringing it to a recycling location.

Like... A waste oil heater a la mother earth news. (One guy used the ME news heater to heat his hot water and home) I'm wondering if anybody tried to harness the btu's in the old oil in some other form or fashion.

I used to dump it in the fuel tank of my diesels and run it as road fuel. However, I've stopped that practice until I can build a filtering apparatus that will bring the particulate size down to around 5-10 µm.

I save mine
 

I like to pour a few onces under some of the Harley owners bikes that I know. Drives em crazy, eh?

If it's a Japanese vehicle, I use a handful of rice.

Hole in the ground. Down storm sewers. Neighbour's sandbox. In the lake. :D :D

I don't know. I just fill it in 2L coke bottles or a 3 gal kerosene bottle and bring it to Jiffy Screw.

I like to.....
 

Drink it..... lol.....

Or convince people its chocolate syrup for their milk or Ice Cream....

Just kidding.... :D

I just bring it to the local auto parts store to dispose of it

A friend of mine runs a European Repair shop, I take it to him and he burns it in his waste oil heater. It's a neat piece of kit, loves transmission fluid, engine oil and brake fluid all thrown together.

Kevin

A friend of mine dumps his used oil into his heating oil tank. Figures that 5qts mixed with 250gallons isn't going to hurt anything. Been doing it for years. I have electric heat so it won't work for me. I have heard a regular oil burning furnace can be rejetted to burn used motor oil. This would make a good project for someone with a shop to heat. RT

That depends. Is the oil he is dumping in synthetic or regular. You cannot mix the two of them or the flame in the heater will burn funny. :D :D

If you grease the electrons, you will reduce resistance and it will heat your house faster. Pour some of the oil on the electric heaters.

Seriously, even if it could be rejetted, unless you are running a lube shop and have access to tons of used oil, what good is it?

local DPW (Departmetn of Public Works)..they burn it.

I pour a little into the sander hopper on my truck and then run it. The flight bars mix it with the residual sand and keep the chain links from rusting or freezing. Otherwise, I take it to recycling.

Ummm ... I leave it in a bucket in the garage, always pledging that I'll take it somewhere and dispose of it at some point, but never actually doing so. Occasionally raccoons try to wash their hands in the bucket. At that point some of the oil is smeared around the garage floor in paw-print designs. So really, it's like art for the garage floor.

County recycles it here in Green Valley. At Alpine in the summer, I take it to the nearest airport. They burn it to heat their main hangar in the winter. Nice furnace, but expensive to buy.

Wes

Can you mix paint in the oil too? That way you will have a work of art you can sell. Call it The Oily Racoon.

We used to pour it in the ground around our old shed. It's an old trick for keeping the termites away. I also used to rent from a guy who let me pour it around his house for the same reason. Not environmentally friendly but...

Now we pour it into a 55 gallon drum and when it's full, take it to the dump to be recycled.

Scott

Thanks for all the replies so far :)

I was hoping that besides the taking the oil to the recycler, that someone had come up with a recycling process of their own. I don't have much need for a waste oil burning heater here (except for a couple months out of the year), but hoped that somebody maybe made a home made waste oil burner, and then got creative and heated up a tank of water to drive a steam turbine or engine, which in turn powered a generator.

I've played around with a cast iron frying pan, some old slotted rotors and a "burning element" of sorts, and then stuck a 30" piece of 2.5" exhaust pipe over the hub hole. It makes quite a flame! (and puts out a good bit of heat).

Too bad it would cover a marshmallow with soot, should I attempt to roast one. :D

oil fired hot tub?

Actually, if it weren't too damn cold to get the oxy acetylene torches running I'd probably be working on that project right now. :)

A friend and I are building a set of turk burners who's eventual destination will be a WVO and biodiesel byproduct fired hot tub. :) With all luck it'll be running by burning man '05.

A bunch of info about turk burners: http://biodiesel.infopop.cc/eve/ubb.x?a=tpc&s=447609751&f=719605551&m=127106855

peace,
sam

I tried burning it in my diesel for fuel. I came away with the impression that you would have to blend about 50-50 with RUG to tame it. Not an attractive option to me but doable in a pinch.

[QUOTE=aklim]That depends. Is the oil he is dumping in synthetic or regular. You cannot mix the two of them or the flame in the heater will burn funny. :D :D

If you grease the electrons, you will reduce resistance and it will heat your house faster. Pour some of the oil on the electric heaters.

Seriously, even if it could be rejetted, unless you are running a lube shop and have access to tons of used oil, what good is it?[/QUOTE]

Used oil is a commodity, you just have to know where to buy it. Companies that are paid to haul it away from operations like Jiffy Lube, etc. will deliver it to you if you have a big enough tank to warrant the trip. I would imagine that with heating oil rising you will see more and more of this. Still, just pouring a few gallons in the house tank is a simple way to dispose of it. RT

check this out
 

http://www.cleanburn.com/index.cfm

looks like a winner

Those are HUGE! Using their figures, their smallest one is oversized for my garage by a factor of 10.

Uhhh, around here we are paid by the companies that haul it away.

Antifreeze on the other hand......

Has everyone forgotten about the most important use for used motor oil? Making Molotov cocktails! When the dead return to life to feed on the flesh of the living, my 15 gallons of oil and bucket of greasy shop rags will come in handy. Now to find some bottles and gasoline...

A friend of mine who runs a transmission shop has one of these exact units. http://www.cleanburn.com/cb1400.cfm They work REAL well but are a bit spendy at first. He gets all the flammable fluids he needs so it works out ok. It burns super clean, most filter cleanings are just a rinse and replace.
I was impressed with the unit...its even quite quiet.

I have a couple of friends who use it in their wood burners by drilling a small hole and running a line into it. That line has an petcock (spelling?) and allows them to adjust the flow. They have a five gallon funnel that sits near the stove and feeds the line. Inside the stove, they suspended a very thick chain that runs vertical down to the wood. This is where the oil runs down and burns. It makes the wood last alot longer.

Don

I like the idea of an oil fired hot tub... A Creative Idea :)

I was thinking that for a heatexchanger, you could use an old water heater from an RV.

Phideaux, Are you going to build a heatexchanger of your own design, or modify something else?

-Larry

If it weren't for the fact that it doesn't get all that cold here, I would probably augment my heating system with old oil also. But when all you have is a heatpump, there isn't much you can do.

We haven't decided yet whether we are going to build our own exchanger or not... A small gas water heater (with flue and exchanger built in) could be a handy platform, though heating the large amount of water in a hot tub may be a challenge for even two or three small exchangers. Finding out what works is half the fun! :)

peace,
sam

So I was following some links, and following up an idea that I had last year (had a burner made at work out of an old compressor tank with fan - fuel used was "of unknown origin" but it was a bit more flammable than oil, and diesel)

Anyway... I've been playing around trying to make something without using a fan this time. The small dia. pipe really creates nice suction. The angled pipe on the Y is handy for pouring in oil...by the time it gets to the bottom, it is already starting to boil (a few times it didn't make it to the bottom).

With a system like this you would want the chain suspended so that it was exposed to intake air and not exhaust air. As the oil heats and vaporizes you want the fumes going into the flame and not unburned out the exhaust.

I burned some newspaper logs that had been soaked in veg oil. That worked pretty good. Don't know what kind of residue might end up in your chimney.