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WVO and WMO fuel incompatibilities
Black diesel and waste vegetable oil make glue in your fuel system
While experimenting with blended alternative diesel fuels I destroyed my first injector pump about 4 years ago. At the time I was not sure what I was doing wrong, but after destroying several other injector pumps, and getting a fair amount of sludge in my fuel tank. I have finally figured it out.
Up until two years ago I had made my fuel blends by filtering WVO into my fuel tank, then adding gasoline (petrol) on top of it. After destroying 2 injector pumps and sets of injectors I finally took a jar of my filtered WVO and added gasoline (petrol) to it and let it sit. Within minutes a dark fluid precipitated out of solution. I concluded that the adding of gasoline (petrol) to settled and filtered waste oil (WVO or WMO) caused some contaminants to precipitate out of solution, which accumulated at the bottom of my fuel tank, until a critical moment, when it got sucked into the injector pump, which glued it and the injectors shut. So, I switched to blending external to the fuel tank. It then took me about a year of experiments to discover that I had to give the blend about 24-48 hours for most of the contaminants to precipitate out of solution.
Recently I explored WMO blending to understand the process better. I began with blending external to the fuel tank, and waiting three days for the precipitates to settle out, then I drained the sludge and filtered the blend into the fuel tank.
At the time I extracted a sample of the filtered WMO-80 fuel in two half-gallon (2-liter) bottles. One bottle of WMO-80 I blended with a sample of my previous fuel blend, which was WVO-80 blend. I let that 50/50 blend settle for a few days then poured off the dark liquid to see if there was a precipitate. Indeed there was. It was black goo at the bottom of the bottle accounting for about 1-2% of the solution.
Most of the time I burn a blend of 80% WVO and 20% gasoline (petrol). It runs fine indefinitely. Then, immediately prior to each injector pump failure I had added a small amount of petroleum oil to the blend to see how well it would work, but in each case it plugged my injectors and damaged my injector pump.
It turns out there is an incompatibility between filtered WVO and WMO. Therefore there are two possible solutions:
1) If I am going to blend WMO, then I should blend equal amounts of WVO into it to cause the precipitate to form prior to filtering.
2) That blend needs at least 3 days of settling.
3) The precipitate must be removed before filtering.
4) Acetone should be added to that blend at about 5% to force lacquers out of solution. 5) Or, one could run WVO-based blends in one tank, and WMO-based blends in another tank.
Note: I found the precipitate sludge dissolves in lacquer thinner, or MEK.
My solution to not dropping the fuel tank after the sludge has formed in the fuel tank, is to flush it out after the above blending disaster with lacquer thinner. After flushing out the fuel tank, the removed contaminated fuel blend can be settled, then re-filtered to remove the lacquers. Lacquer thinner can also be added to the current blend to dissolve any residue of lacquer in the fuel blend, which will burn as fuel. Since the sludge produced by blending WVO with WMO accounts for about 1-2%, and it is soluble in MEK or lacquer thinner, one need only add MEK or lacquer thinner at about 1-2%, to the fuel tank.
What is this precipitate?
Some have speculated that the precipitate produced from blending WVO with WMO is "polymerization." I believe a more simple explanation can be found in considering that WMO is a saturated solution of free-carbon and lacquer in a petroleum distillate. When WMO is added to a WVO solution with gasoline (petrol), the petroleum distillates and vegetable oil blend readily into solution; however, vegetable oil does not have the same capacity for dissolving free-carbon and lacquer as petroleum distillates have, so the free-carbon and lacquer precipitates out of solution. There might be other components in either the petroleum distillates and/or vegetable oil that also precipitate out of solution that form the precipitate into a sticky, rubbery substance.
Here is a photo of what my injectors look like after 2 weeks on WMO-80 black diesel blend that had been put into the fuel tank with a small residue of WVO-80 blend still in it.
http://i1084.photobucket.com/albums/...jectors323.jpg
Before pumping the black diesel into my fuel tank I had pumped the fuel tank out of the WVO-80 blend that was in it. From experience I know there is still about 3 gallons of fuel at the bottom of the tank after pumping it out through its drain.
I installed a set of injectors that had been ruined like this from my last WMO experiment. I have found I can clean the injectors up by soaking them in MEK or lacquer thinner over night, then scraping the residual coke off with a razor blade, then picking the small stuff off the corners with a dental pick, then wire brushing it clean.
I also pumped the fuel tank out again and filtered the contents again down to 1-micron. I found about 1% of the blend had turned into black sludge and a black liquid none of which is soluble in petroleum distillates. Here is a pick of what the fuel line looks like:
I have found I can remove the above sludge from coating my entire fuel system by creating a loop from the injector back to the fuel tank, and using an auxiliary fuel pump, I pour a few gallons of MEK or lacquer thinner into the fuel tank, then let the pump recirculate the solvent for about an hour.
After re-filtering the WMO-80 fuel blend and replacing the injectors the engine now runs fine.
Since July I have done a few more experiments with blends that reduce the resulting precipitates of lacquer and free-carbon. I am presently functioning under the hypothesis that waste vegetable and motor oils will cause precipitates to form when they are blended together. Those precipitates are lacquer and free-carbon.
I am also functioning under the hypothesis that blending them together in a blending tank with gasoline will cause those precipitates to form in a single event, which will allow the blender to trap and remove them, and end up with a fuel blend that will not cause any trouble for the engine. I have successfully accomplished this result.
Removing the lacquer and free-carbon from waste oils requires three things.
1) Blending WVO with WMO at 50% will force the precipitation of lacquer and free-carbon.
2) Then, adding gasoline will reduce the time required to precipitate out the contaminants.
3) Then, adding acetone at about 5% will force the remaining precipitates of lacquer and free-carbon. (It turns out that acetone rejects lacquer)
It turns out that WMO will blend with petroleum distillates, WATF, and biodeisel without producing the precipitates of lacquer and free-carbon. And, it turns out that WVO will blend with petroleum distillates, WATF, and biodeisel without producing the precipitates of lacquer and free-carbon. However, blending WMO with WVO produces precipitates of lacquer and free-carbon in abundance.
OK, so where does the lacquer come from? My hypothesis is that heating oil to its oxidation point produces lacquer. WVO is generally changed about once a week in kitchens, and it tends to go through one heat cycle per day, so it produces some lacquer. However, WMO goes through a heat cycles every time the engine is started then shut down; and motor oil is not changed for months; therefore, WMO most probably has a great deal of lacquer dissolved into it along with soot, which is free-carbon.
So, why does blending WVO with WMO produce precipitates of lacquer and free-carbon? My hypothesis is WVO does not have the same capacity to absorb lacquer and free-carbon as does WMO; whereas WVO and WMO have a powerful attraction of absorption for each other. Thus, WVO forces lacquer and free carbon out of solution with WMO.
We can therefore use these phenomena to our advantage by blending WMO with WVO at 50% to force lacquer and free-carbon out of solution. I have successfully done this experiment, and my 50-50 blend of WVO with WMO with gasoline at 20-30% and acetone at 5% comes out dark amber allowing light transmission through it, and no further precipitation has been observed. Recently I successfully drove 500 miles (800KM) on a diesel fuel blend that included WMO and WVO with no observable excessive emissions, or loss of power or performance.
From Wiki:
“In polymer chemistry, polymerization is a process of reacting monomer molecules together in a chemical reaction to form three-dimensional networks or polymer chains.[1][2][3] There are many forms of polymerization and different systems exist to categorize them. In chemical compounds, polymerization occurs via a variety of reaction mechanisms that vary in complexity due to functional groups present in reacting compounds[4] and their inherent steric effects explained by VSEPR Theory. In more straightforward polymerization, alkenes, which are relatively stable due to σ bonding between carbon atoms form polymers through relatively simple radical reactions; in contrast, more complex reactions such as those that involve substitution at the carbonyl group require more complex synthesis due to the way in which reacting molecules polymerize.[4]”
Black diesel and waste vegetable oil make glue in your fuel system
While experimenting with blended alternative diesel fuels I destroyed my first injector pump about 4 years ago. At the time I was not sure what I was doing wrong, but after destroying several other injector pumps, and getting a fair amount of sludge in my fuel tank. I have finally figured it out.
Up until two years ago I had made my fuel blends by filtering WVO into my fuel tank, then adding gasoline (petrol) on top of it. After destroying 2 injector pumps and sets of injectors I finally took a jar of my filtered WVO and added gasoline (petrol) to it and let it sit. Within minutes a dark fluid precipitated out of solution. I concluded that the adding of gasoline (petrol) to settled and filtered waste oil (WVO or WMO) caused some contaminants to precipitate out of solution, which accumulated at the bottom of my fuel tank, until a critical moment, when it got sucked into the injector pump, which glued it and the injectors shut. So, I switched to blending external to the fuel tank. It then took me about a year of experiments to discover that I had to give the blend about 24-48 hours for most of the contaminants to precipitate out of solution.
Recently I explored WMO blending to understand the process better. I began with blending external to the fuel tank, and waiting three days for the precipitates to settle out, then I drained the sludge and filtered the blend into the fuel tank.
At the time I extracted a sample of the filtered WMO-80 fuel in two half-gallon (2-liter) bottles. One bottle of WMO-80 I blended with a sample of my previous fuel blend, which was WVO-80 blend. I let that 50/50 blend settle for a few days then poured off the dark liquid to see if there was a precipitate. Indeed there was. It was black goo at the bottom of the bottle accounting for about 1-2% of the solution.
Most of the time I burn a blend of 80% WVO and 20% gasoline (petrol). It runs fine indefinitely. Then, immediately prior to each injector pump failure I had added a small amount of petroleum oil to the blend to see how well it would work, but in each case it plugged my injectors and damaged my injector pump.
It turns out there is an incompatibility between filtered WVO and WMO. Therefore there are two possible solutions:
1) If I am going to blend WMO, then I should blend equal amounts of WVO into it to cause the precipitate to form prior to filtering.
2) That blend needs at least 3 days of settling.
3) The precipitate must be removed before filtering.
4) Acetone should be added to that blend at about 5% to force lacquers out of solution. 5) Or, one could run WVO-based blends in one tank, and WMO-based blends in another tank.
Note: I found the precipitate sludge dissolves in lacquer thinner, or MEK.
My solution to not dropping the fuel tank after the sludge has formed in the fuel tank, is to flush it out after the above blending disaster with lacquer thinner. After flushing out the fuel tank, the removed contaminated fuel blend can be settled, then re-filtered to remove the lacquers. Lacquer thinner can also be added to the current blend to dissolve any residue of lacquer in the fuel blend, which will burn as fuel. Since the sludge produced by blending WVO with WMO accounts for about 1-2%, and it is soluble in MEK or lacquer thinner, one need only add MEK or lacquer thinner at about 1-2%, to the fuel tank.
What is this precipitate?
Some have speculated that the precipitate produced from blending WVO with WMO is "polymerization." I believe a more simple explanation can be found in considering that WMO is a saturated solution of free-carbon and lacquer in a petroleum distillate. When WMO is added to a WVO solution with gasoline (petrol), the petroleum distillates and vegetable oil blend readily into solution; however, vegetable oil does not have the same capacity for dissolving free-carbon and lacquer as petroleum distillates have, so the free-carbon and lacquer precipitates out of solution. There might be other components in either the petroleum distillates and/or vegetable oil that also precipitate out of solution that form the precipitate into a sticky, rubbery substance.
Here is a photo of what my injectors look like after 2 weeks on WMO-80 black diesel blend that had been put into the fuel tank with a small residue of WVO-80 blend still in it.
http://i1084.photobucket.com/albums/...jectors323.jpg
Before pumping the black diesel into my fuel tank I had pumped the fuel tank out of the WVO-80 blend that was in it. From experience I know there is still about 3 gallons of fuel at the bottom of the tank after pumping it out through its drain.
I installed a set of injectors that had been ruined like this from my last WMO experiment. I have found I can clean the injectors up by soaking them in MEK or lacquer thinner over night, then scraping the residual coke off with a razor blade, then picking the small stuff off the corners with a dental pick, then wire brushing it clean.
I also pumped the fuel tank out again and filtered the contents again down to 1-micron. I found about 1% of the blend had turned into black sludge and a black liquid none of which is soluble in petroleum distillates. Here is a pick of what the fuel line looks like:
I have found I can remove the above sludge from coating my entire fuel system by creating a loop from the injector back to the fuel tank, and using an auxiliary fuel pump, I pour a few gallons of MEK or lacquer thinner into the fuel tank, then let the pump recirculate the solvent for about an hour.
After re-filtering the WMO-80 fuel blend and replacing the injectors the engine now runs fine.
Since July I have done a few more experiments with blends that reduce the resulting precipitates of lacquer and free-carbon. I am presently functioning under the hypothesis that waste vegetable and motor oils will cause precipitates to form when they are blended together. Those precipitates are lacquer and free-carbon.
I am also functioning under the hypothesis that blending them together in a blending tank with gasoline will cause those precipitates to form in a single event, which will allow the blender to trap and remove them, and end up with a fuel blend that will not cause any trouble for the engine. I have successfully accomplished this result.
Removing the lacquer and free-carbon from waste oils requires three things.
1) Blending WVO with WMO at 50% will force the precipitation of lacquer and free-carbon.
2) Then, adding gasoline will reduce the time required to precipitate out the contaminants.
3) Then, adding acetone at about 5% will force the remaining precipitates of lacquer and free-carbon. (It turns out that acetone rejects lacquer)
It turns out that WMO will blend with petroleum distillates, WATF, and biodeisel without producing the precipitates of lacquer and free-carbon. And, it turns out that WVO will blend with petroleum distillates, WATF, and biodeisel without producing the precipitates of lacquer and free-carbon. However, blending WMO with WVO produces precipitates of lacquer and free-carbon in abundance.
OK, so where does the lacquer come from? My hypothesis is that heating oil to its oxidation point produces lacquer. WVO is generally changed about once a week in kitchens, and it tends to go through one heat cycle per day, so it produces some lacquer. However, WMO goes through a heat cycles every time the engine is started then shut down; and motor oil is not changed for months; therefore, WMO most probably has a great deal of lacquer dissolved into it along with soot, which is free-carbon.
So, why does blending WVO with WMO produce precipitates of lacquer and free-carbon? My hypothesis is WVO does not have the same capacity to absorb lacquer and free-carbon as does WMO; whereas WVO and WMO have a powerful attraction of absorption for each other. Thus, WVO forces lacquer and free carbon out of solution with WMO.
We can therefore use these phenomena to our advantage by blending WMO with WVO at 50% to force lacquer and free-carbon out of solution. I have successfully done this experiment, and my 50-50 blend of WVO with WMO with gasoline at 20-30% and acetone at 5% comes out dark amber allowing light transmission through it, and no further precipitation has been observed. Recently I successfully drove 500 miles (800KM) on a diesel fuel blend that included WMO and WVO with no observable excessive emissions, or loss of power or performance.
From Wiki:
“In polymer chemistry, polymerization is a process of reacting monomer molecules together in a chemical reaction to form three-dimensional networks or polymer chains.[1][2][3] There are many forms of polymerization and different systems exist to categorize them. In chemical compounds, polymerization occurs via a variety of reaction mechanisms that vary in complexity due to functional groups present in reacting compounds[4] and their inherent steric effects explained by VSEPR Theory. In more straightforward polymerization, alkenes, which are relatively stable due to σ bonding between carbon atoms form polymers through relatively simple radical reactions; in contrast, more complex reactions such as those that involve substitution at the carbonyl group require more complex synthesis due to the way in which reacting molecules polymerize.[4]”
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