water in fuel
i've been on several forums researching bio-d and wvo, as well as diesels in general. and while there's a universal concensus that water in the fuel is BAD. no one so far has said how much water is bad.

now i'm not talking about what i call "gross water" ie visible droplets of water but the miniscule kind you can't see.

so i took advantage of some resources that are available to me. i work at a chemical plant.

i gave some samples to one of the analytical chemist here. testing for water is a routine part of our qa program.

all tests were done by a PhD Anylitical Chemist here at work.

the results are as follows:

D#2 from hess truck stop on rt13 0.7068%

k-1 from sothern on rt10 0.7883%

bd100 unwashed and settled 0.29%

settled and filtered WVO 0.28%

wvo un filterd fresh from fryer 0.32%

i was actually surprised by the results, and i'm going to resample in a week from the same sources and see if there's a difference.

but this leads to my question; so how much water is too much?? is there a spec from MB on % water allowable in fuel?

thanks.

Dude, that's honestly super interesting....but impossibly mind-boggling.

So dirty WVO has less suspended water than finished D2?????

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1981 240d - 135k - Arlene

Wow, that's nuts.

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1979 240D- 316K miles - VGT Turbo, Intercooler, Stick Shift, Many Other Mods - Daily Driver

1982 300SD - 232K miles - Wife's Daily Driver

1986 560SL - Wife's red speed machine

This is very interesting results. Kinda goes totally against what most argue about WVO. Of course there needs to be more collaborating results but this first test is interesting. Can you also test washed BD to see if it absorbs any water.

will be resampling some time this week. very intrested to see the results. maybe the high water content in the d2 was due to the resent weather here, or a recent tank filling. not sure.

Hmm. Hard to imagine why so little a difference here.
What about de-watered WVO?

Also, when compared to pump diesel, how can fryer oil be so low, something that they cook frozen and wet products in?

What test exactly is being performed here?

To make this more interesting, I suggest you get several more samples of regular diesel.

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Think Alternative Energy!
300CD '80 (now gone but not forgotten...)

The amount of water present when the fuel leaves the refinery ought to be part of the ASTM spec's.

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Terry Allison
N. Calif. & Boca Chica, Panama

09' E320 Bluetec 77k (USA)
09' Hyundai Santa Fe Diesel 48k (S.A.)

[quote=Jimmy Joe;1854095]Also, when compared to pump diesel, how can fryer oil be so low, something that they cook frozen and wet products in?
[quote]

Cooking oil in a fryolator is well north of 212 degrees.

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Mark in MA
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Yes, I always wondered about that. Surely most of the water would get boiled off in the cooking process.

Jeremy

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"Buster" in the '95

Our all-Diesel family
1996 E300D (W210) . .338,000 miles Wife's car
2005 E320 CDI . . 113,000 miles My car
Santa Rosa population 176,762 (2022)
Total. . . . . . . . . . . . 627,762
"Oh lord won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz."
-- Janis Joplin, October 1, 1970

D2 has more water than WVO? Jeez. I'm going to be adding a water sep to my engine ASAP now -- I want the thing to last another 730,000 miles (to 1m miles) and that seems like a good step to take.

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1983 Mercedes-Benz 240D
Automatic, A/C, Power Sunroof, Power Right Side Mirror
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Temperature in the fryers is well above the boiling point of water as well. So it is also reasonable to think if any water was in the oil it is already boiled off.
Really it is always best to have a water separator on a diesel. For piece of mind if nothing else.

Amount of water in WVO depends on many variables. What are the restaurants cooking in the oil? How long does it remain heated after the last food was cooked and before it was dumped? How much grill grease gets dumped along with the fryer oil? How weather-tight is the dumpster they are putting it in? Do they occasionally leave the lid open?

The oil I get from one (Chinese) restaurant has no visible water at all, and hardly requires any settling, whereas another of my restaurants (a diner) has significant amounts of water in the WVO, which requires heating and settling.

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1987 Mercedes 300D ~200K (Greasecar & Biodiesel)
1993 Ford F-250 7.3 IDI diesel 165K (Biodiesel)
1996 Thomas/International Bus with DT466 engine

As someone that has run their car on veg oil for over a year and has championed the cause of drying for some time, I also find this extremely interesting. The most surprising part to me is the amount of water in the dino. At 3/4 of 1%, this is Much higher than I would have presumed it would/ should be.
In 100L of diesel, .75% equates to a large beer bottle full of water! Maybe I can stop bothering with drying and my water injection system!

I will have access to the services of a lab in a couple of weeks and will be very interested to see if they can do a similar test for me. Is there a specific name for this test so I could ask for it to be done in the same way to compare results?

I dry my oil so it passes a very hot, hot pan test with NO bubbles which if the above figures are reliable, would make it much dryer than the dino.
My oil as collected is relatively consistent in a hot pan test for its water content but it is much lower after a few months settling in my upflow tank. ( But still not able to pass a hot pan test.)

For some time I have told people that I did believe a percentage of water in the fuel may actually help things but as I had no way to determine what that amount of water may be nor to tell when the oil I had was at the proper water content, the safest thing I could do was to remove as much water as possible.

I have always found there is a LOT of misinformation and misconceptions on the use of veg oil and if supporting evidence could be found to back these findings up, It would be a HUGE shake up and break a long held stable rule of veg oil use.

I would really like to see some other people test their samples of Diesel particularly as well as veg oil to corroborate these very interesting findings.

sorry so long.
chemist was gone on vacation or i was. both here now and machine was down for service.
will talk with her today about bringing some samples this week.

D#2 astm spec is .05% h2o. but once its dumped into the tank under ground there's no telling what's down there.

my wvo is from a fish fry place. it comes off the fryer hot stored indoors while cooled and poured into the cubies for me to pick up.

i seldom ever see free water in it. once i think. but that could have been from the chinese place i used to pick up from.

i believe were use a karl fisher machine to test for water.

i'm hoping others will do some quantitative testing as well.

Check out this photo of B100 samples and opine and then I will tell you where the samples are from.....

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