Hi Everyone,
Two nights ago I woke up about 2:00AM freezing my A** off. After checking the usual suspects I realize that I had run out of oil. I had recently stopped auto deliveries because I want to move my tank this spring, unfortunately I didn’t count on this cold spell and forgot to check my tank. Anyway after speaking to the oil company and being informed that a delivery would not happen for 24 to 36 hours a friend suggested I use a few gallons of diesel until I receive my delivery.
Was this a good choice?
Could there be problems down the road by using diesel?
What about kerosene could that has been a better choice?
Thanks for any advice and or suggestions,
Rick
Edited 3/26/2004 9:53 am ET by R!CKL
Replies
Furnace oil = No 2 oil.
Diesel oil = no 2 oil with some additives for engine protection.
You can run furnace oil in your diesel engine, but you don't have the additives. In short, go for it. Better than freezin
The ONLY disadvantage to running your furnace on diesel fuel is the additional taxes you pay on it. That's why it's dyed a different color. So trucker's can get caught using it in their rigs.
Jon
Yes, use the vehicle fuel diesel, no problem.
Bring disposable gloves, and a tarp in your trunk when hauling those jerry cans - the stains and odor are hard to get rid of.
I've also heard of mixing used motor oil -- like 10w30 -- in with furnace fuel. But not being in an oil furnace climate, I'm not sure how kosher that is.
-- J.S.
"mixing used motor oil -- like 10w30 -- in with furnace fuel"
Yes, it will burn. Yes, it has BTUs in it. Yes, you will save a little money in the short term. It may also have pieces of metal big enough to clog an orifice (if it gets past your filter) and certainly has lead, iron, copper, and aluminium in it. The iron is not a health problem, but the rest are.
The people who breath the most of your stack emissions are your own family. What if a smelter was set up next door and started emitting heavy metals? Would you be pleased?
So, yes you will save a few bucks and save a trip to the oil recycling center. But I'd just take it in and let an oil refinery reprocess it. A single furnace repair bill and you are behind financially. Also it's illegal to burn hazardous wastes without the proper (and expensive) licensing.
I knew a very skilled transmission mechanic who did it. And didn't have any problems. But this was someone who has a few patents under his belts and great attention to detail. Are you going to check for water contamination? Acid content? Etc?
And there was a non-profit railroad museum who took it in to fuel their engines (which were designed to burn much nastier stuff than your furnace is). But they had to stop that due to the new regulations.David Thomas Overlooking Cook Inlet in Kenai, Alaska
I raised my eyebrows at the motor oil idea too. Orfices/ burnerjets are designed for the fuel being burned, kero will burn ok in a fuel oil burner but might need some fine tuning. Deisel and home heating fuel burn the same in the same nozzle, but motor oil thickens the mix to need a different flame-maker without coinstant cleaning and misfire can happen too.
But also, besides spewing probable toxic exhaust, the heavy metals can come to line the walls of the flue, draweing heat to it so the resulting fatigue will shorten the life of either a metal or a clay flue. Not appreciably but still something to consider when weighing cost/benefit projections.
I sure wouldn't try it for a temporary situation like this when It ios so easy to just go buy 5-10 gallons of deisel.
Welcome to the Taunton University of Knowledge FHB Campus at Breaktime. where ... Excellence is its own reward!
Yes, the viscosity will be higher so the nozzle might not have the right pattern. Also, the density is higher so the BTU/gallon is higher and the mix will need more oxygen. So that mixture would need to be reset or more CO would be generated.
David Thomas Overlooking Cook Inlet in Kenai, Alaska
Realistically, I cannot imagine that a gallon or 2 of motor oil mixed with 200+ gallons of fuel oil would make much difference in fuel viscosity or performance.
There are plenty of other reasons not to do it, as mentioned.
"cannot imagine that a gallon or 2 of motor oil mixed with 200+ gallons of fuel oil would make much difference "
Agreed. Dilution is the solution to pollution, as they say. And putting it in your fuel oil tank is vastly better than pouring it on the ground, or in a storm drain, or in your septic. Not as good as the oil recycling drop-off at the transfer. But if from some reason, you can't won't do that, then diluting and burning beats other illegal disposal methods.
Burner clogging, air flow tuning, and exposure to metals would all be much more of an issue if someone was running a large fraction of used motor oil.
Ever seen a bio-diesel car go by? The exhaust smells like French fries. Really.David Thomas Overlooking Cook Inlet in Kenai, Alaska
> Ever seen a bio-diesel car go by? The exhaust smells like French fries. Really.
I have heard of them using used cooking oil from fast food restaurants as fuel. Not sure what kind of engine, though.
-- J.S.
Regular old diesel engine. Diesel rabbits seem to be a favorite. You can run the McD's fry oil through a particulate filter and run it straight for a while.
But, if I remember, the fry oil has been partially oxidized and there's weak acid in there too. So an outfit selling "bio-diesel" will filter, chemically treat, and neutralize the old cooking oil. I've got the particulars around here somewhere. So while their raw material is free, the processing and mark-up is such that it goes for $5/gallon.
Some of the market is sailboat in-boards. They don't use much and they have to smell the exhaust - which is definitely better than with dino-diesel.
So maybe the original poster should have raided the waste-oil tank behind McDonald's to get his heat back on?David Thomas Overlooking Cook Inlet in Kenai, Alaska
Yeah the cost/benefit is not that great for bio-deisel. It is apparently competitive only where it has been heavily subsidized. I suppose you have to take into account the cost of alternative disposal. Of course it does not scale very well either. Not enough cooking waste to make a dent in dino oil consumption.
Show me a fuel oil tank that has used motor oil added and I'll show you an oil tank that builds up sludge quicker than a porta-potty at the county fair.
If the heavy metals do not make it to the firebox (can you say "CANCER"?), they settle down to the bottom of the tank with all that other black gunk that comes out of your engine's crankcase. When you get an oil delivery some of that sludge starts circulating, and then gets sucked up into the line to the burner. Better get a warm blankie cause your oil burner nozzle will clog up at the worst coldsnap in the middle of the night.
Residential oil burners and *most* smaller commercial setups are just not able to handle used motor oil no matter how much you dilute it. It is not worth the headaches to gamble. Probably would void your warranty and service contract. All to save a few bucks?
There are heaters especially made to burn used motor oil. However, even those can clog up from the darker gunky used mototr oil.
There was an article on bio-diesel in Countryside magazine a few years ago. The process is somewhat involved, maybe a little more complicated than making lye soap. They heat the oil and react it with some fairly strong base, IIRC, then let it settle and drain off the precipitate. Maybe a little more heating to evaporate any remaining water. No high pressure steps and no temps higher than boiling water. There was enough detail in the article that I would have felt comfortable trying it if I had more time than money and drove a diesel.
The link is to the magazine home page. They don't have any articles on line AFAIK, but they do sell reprints of selected articles.
http://www.countrysidemag.com/
"Not as good as the oil recycling drop-off at the transfer."
David,
Perhaps, but did you know that most oil that is "recycled" actually just gets filtered (coarsely) and is used as "bunker oil" to power all those cargo ships back to China (carrying our scrap plastic and metals). Really.
Jon
Why the quotes around "recycled"? The same thing is true of most recycled materials. They typically can't be reused in the same product. Some things, like paper, are irreversably damaged in the recycling process. You can't disassemble office grade paper without tearing a lot of the fibers, and shorter fibers make lower quality paper. For some materials, it would cost too much to bring them up to the same standard of purity as raw materials. For clear glass food and beverage containers, it's cheaper to start with sand than to manually sort all the brown and green glass out of the waste stream. Metals come closer than many other materials, but even there, lots of alloys can't be made out of scrap without an uneconomical amount of sorting.
Motor oil used to be recycled into motor oil, or at least I assume it did. I used to buy Eagle brand re-refined non-detergent oil, because I had a car that used three quarts a week. It cost 48 cents a quart, half as much as the cheapest alternative. It didn't say on the can that it was re-refined from used motor oil, but that's what I assumed from the name. If nobody's doing that anymore, it's because it costs too much to filter or distill or precipitate out all the crap nobody wants in their engine.
"Why the quotes around "recycled""
Dunc,
The implication being it gets reused for a similar purpose, which it doesn't.
Jon
I did it with an old pot-type burner. Worked fine. A bit more expensive.
Not sure how it would work with a more sophisticated furnace but I wouldn't expect problems. A furnace man would know more.
Auto diesel is ok as long as you are prepared to haul it with whatever it is you're going to use.
As noted by another poster, make sure you line the trunk with plenty of cardboard/newspaper and tarp on the bottom.
Another option, if your house electrical wiring is in good shape, is to get several oil-filled electric radiators to get you through the rest of the heating season.
Place them in front of outside windows.
They're only $35-40 at Wal-Mart and work well as temporary heat and very handy to have around for those occasions when they are needed.
Rick,
As mentioned in other posts, Number 2 diesel is the same as number 2 heating fuel but has a few more additives to keep injectors on the engines clean and lubricated as well as the downside of road taxes. One thing not mentioned here is that in a most cold regions, you will be getting number 1 (kerosene) rather then number 2 oil depending on when they switch back. Number 2 has about 145,000 Btu's/gal vs 106,000 Btu/gal for kerosene so you will go through about 1/3rd more oil then normal if you do get number 1, but in a pinch you gotta do what you gotta do. For a day or two until you get your tank filled, it shouldn't be a problem.
Steve
Hi Everyone,
Thanks for all you help. I pick-up 10gals of diesel and I’m using it in combination with a couple of electric heaters. I’m able to keep the house at a comfortable level and this week here in the Northeast temperatures have risen to the upper 50’s. At this point I’ve decided to postpone the delivery and I’m moving my tank this week. I’ll have it filled after the move just in case things get cold again.
Thanks again.
Rick
to save some money see if you can find some offroad diesel. THe cost is between heatingoil and on-road diesel.