I think the design of the Diesel heater is not practical for burning used oil. I built something similar from old fire extinguisher and a propane tank (heat exchanger) but your videos were instrumental in seeing just how often I would need to access the burn chamber to clean out prior to use. Thank you for all the hard work!
New subscriber here. Good content. Recently installed a diesel heater in my garage. I was using 1.5 gallons of diesel with 1 gallon of waste oil. I run my 5 KW at full power. After close to 40 hours of use. I started getting error codes (temp sensor). I had decent build up but not to the levels you experienced. I recently decided to purchase a second unit so I can just swap out when a problem occurs. I believe build up is just the nature of the beast. I look forward to seeing future videos.
Been following the waste oil experiments since nearly the beginning. Glad to see you're getting better and better results. I would like to try waste oil in mine once more of the downsides are figured out. Thanks for all the hard work, good luck!
for all having problems with cleaning 1st time i cleaned it i just sprayed it with brake cleaner scraped with screwdriver and assembled, that didnt last long and was clogged after 20 hours of use or so 2nd time i cleaned it i REMEMBERED trick for cleaning carbon buildup from intake manifolds (not plastic ones) and that is to heat it up with torch or heating gun so the carbon itself CATCHES FIRE 🔥🔥🔥 after the flames stop you just need to bang it little bit to get out all the white ash, which is burned carbon deposit right now it RUNs much higher temps (200-210 Celsius on display) with no smoke like the day i unboxed it from the box and ran it first time Hope this helps you too, took me about 30 MINUTES⏲⏲ including assembly and dissasembly🔧🛠
I don´t know what kind of waste oil you use ? I have a friend that been using this heater with a mixture of 50% waste hydraulic oil and diesel. He did never pull it apart for cleaning when i asked him. I don´t know how many hours he ran this heater with this waste oil but it is quite some time by know i suppose. I now started myself to do the same thing but i start with a 20% mixture of clean hydraulic 32 waste oil. Lets see how it works out for me. I strongly believe that it does depend on the type of oil used and if it is dirty or not ? The oil i use now is quite clean and only 20% mixture. Thanks for posting your videos :)
I was thinking about the issue of how to rejoin the two pieces of the burn chamber after you make your cut and wondered about using the kind of swedging tool (pipe expander) a muffler shop would use to increase the diameter of muffler pipe so it slides over nominal pipe sizes. That's assuming the burn chamber is a standard diameter, of course. And even better yet, if it is a standard size you could use auto muffler piping to replace the stainless tube.
I wonder if a little stainless steel wool stuffed behind the washer would help with the fuel pooling. Just a thought. I just bought a heater and I will be interested in your results in any case.
Now your talking! Yes, the only way to make this burn waste oil is to modify it. The screen modification is a great way forward. Not even sure if it's needed at all, be worth trying without it for a run. There is another problem though and that is the chamber it burns in is made from aluminium which is a great heat exchanger and very useful for the diesel but because it is such a good heat exchanger the chamber does not get as hot if it were made from steel. The chamber needs to be as hot as possible to properly bun the oil you see somewhere around 700c then practically all the carbon in the oil does get burned up. So the chamber needs to be glowing red hot. I have wondered if the fuel supply could be after the mesh so long as the fuel is atomized or in a spray it should burn nicely but as I said the chamber needs to contain the heat a bit longer. You could insulate the chamber but then the aluminium heatsink would melt because when waste oil is burned efficiently it can be used to melt even steel with a decent setup.
What is the purpose of the mesh? Without decent pressure I don't imagine atomization could come from anything but heat if the mesh is doing it? Another video showed a guy basically run his unit lean. But you have to be able to change the pump speed independent of the fan. That drove the combustion and output temp up, which does seem logical for efficient/more complete waste oil burn, but also indicates the burn chamber can handle at least some more heat. The few liquid fuel burners I've seen run the fuel delivery through the burner before actually discharging the now heated fuel. With pressure they use separate nozzles for different fuel types, with gravity feed the fuel speed is adjusted for each fuel. Heat before the pump has been tried, but I've not seen post pump heating. Really curious if that would help. It would seem easy to test, as I recall Norm already did or still does pre-heat the fuel pre-pump. All he'd have to do is change which fuel lines go where.
Hey Norm, I'm glad you are back.
I think the design of the Diesel heater is not practical for burning used oil. I built something similar from old fire extinguisher and a propane tank (heat exchanger) but your videos were instrumental in seeing just how often I would need to access the burn chamber to clean out prior to use. Thank you for all the hard work!
New subscriber here. Good content. Recently installed a diesel heater in my garage. I was using 1.5 gallons of diesel with 1 gallon of waste oil. I run my 5 KW at full power. After close to 40 hours of use. I started getting error codes (temp sensor). I had decent build up but not to the levels you experienced. I recently decided to purchase a second unit so I can just swap out when a problem occurs. I believe build up is just the nature of the beast. I look forward to seeing future videos.
Been following the waste oil experiments since nearly the beginning. Glad to see you're getting better and better results. I would like to try waste oil in mine once more of the downsides are figured out. Thanks for all the hard work, good luck!
❤ keep r&d! You’re amazing!
Thank you for the update video. I have about 30 gallons of waste motor oil I will soon be trying out.
Did it work?
for all having problems with cleaning
1st time i cleaned it i just sprayed it with brake cleaner scraped with screwdriver and assembled, that didnt last long and was clogged after 20 hours of use or so
2nd time i cleaned it i REMEMBERED trick for cleaning carbon buildup from intake manifolds (not plastic ones) and that is to heat it up with torch or heating gun so the carbon itself CATCHES FIRE 🔥🔥🔥
after the flames stop you just need to bang it little bit to get out all the white ash, which is burned carbon deposit
right now it RUNs much higher temps (200-210 Celsius on display) with no smoke like the day i unboxed it from the box and ran it first time
Hope this helps you too, took me about 30 MINUTES⏲⏲ including assembly and dissasembly🔧🛠
Good to see You making progress. That screen should work better than the screen that is in there now. Keep up the good work!👍
I don´t know what kind of waste oil you use ? I have a friend that been using this heater with a mixture of 50%
waste hydraulic oil and diesel. He did never pull it apart for cleaning when i asked him. I don´t know how many hours he ran this heater with this waste oil but it is quite some time by know i suppose.
I now started myself to do the same thing but i start with a 20% mixture of clean hydraulic 32 waste oil.
Lets see how it works out for me. I strongly believe that it does depend on the type of oil used and
if it is dirty or not ? The oil i use now is quite clean and only 20% mixture.
Thanks for posting your videos :)
I was thinking about the issue of how to rejoin the two pieces of the burn chamber after you make your cut and wondered about using the kind of swedging tool (pipe expander) a muffler shop would use to increase the diameter of muffler pipe so it slides over nominal pipe sizes. That's assuming the burn chamber is a standard diameter, of course. And even better yet, if it is a standard size you could use auto muffler piping to replace the stainless tube.
I wonder if a little stainless steel wool stuffed behind the washer would help with the fuel pooling. Just a thought. I just bought a heater and I will be interested in your results in any case.
Thanks for all that, I wonder if ultrasonic cleaning would do the trick?
I have one it’s ok but not perfect. You need to soak with chemicals
Have you tried pulling the washer out? On many of these, the washer is just lightly pressed in.
I can’t get it out I tried
Now your talking! Yes, the only way to make this burn waste oil is to modify it. The screen modification is a great way forward. Not even sure if it's needed at all, be worth trying without it for a run. There is another problem though and that is the chamber it burns in is made from aluminium which is a great heat exchanger and very useful for the diesel but because it is such a good heat exchanger the chamber does not get as hot if it were made from steel. The chamber needs to be as hot as possible to properly bun the oil you see somewhere around 700c then practically all the carbon in the oil does get burned up. So the chamber needs to be glowing red hot. I have wondered if the fuel supply could be after the mesh so long as the fuel is atomized or in a spray it should burn nicely but as I said the chamber needs to contain the heat a bit longer. You could insulate the chamber but then the aluminium heatsink would melt because when waste oil is burned efficiently it can be used to melt even steel with a decent setup.
What is the purpose of the mesh? Without decent pressure I don't imagine atomization could come from anything but heat if the mesh is doing it?
Another video showed a guy basically run his unit lean. But you have to be able to change the pump speed independent of the fan. That drove the combustion and output temp up, which does seem logical for efficient/more complete waste oil burn, but also indicates the burn chamber can handle at least some more heat.
The few liquid fuel burners I've seen run the fuel delivery through the burner before actually discharging the now heated fuel. With pressure they use separate nozzles for different fuel types, with gravity feed the fuel speed is adjusted for each fuel. Heat before the pump has been tried, but I've not seen post pump heating. Really curious if that would help. It would seem easy to test, as I recall Norm already did or still does pre-heat the fuel pre-pump. All he'd have to do is change which fuel lines go where.
@@danya822 the mesh is heated and takes over from the glow plug mesh once the GP goes out, it's the ignition point for the burn chamber,.
@@Dirt-Diggler Theoretically then, increasing temp via running it "lean" could help eliminate the problem.
@@danya822 on what fuel ? Diesel burns hotter the richer the it is ?
@@Dirt-Diggler on oil. These things burn fine on straight diesel, they just crud up on waste oil.
Do you think after the modifications this would apply to wvo??
Are you having WVO issues ? Most people don’t once filtered and preheat the oil
@@Storman77 I haven't tried it yet, I been waiting for you to experiment
please go back and read my comment on the last video.
I did James thanks for the advice. I’m reading up on how to break the oil down . Thanks
@james duffus I looked through the older videos and cant find the link you posted about refining the used motor oil. Could you post it here? Thanks!
only because you don't run these vertically!