GreaseDrive

I am currently looking into braised plate heat exchangers.   I am looking for a small one to put in just before my 12v vegtherm.   My system is heated really well and can even over-heat with my 12v in line and looped return.  But right now my drive short distances of no more than,  5-10 miles now.  I can never get up to temp unless I warm the car.  I removed all my hose insulation when I was in Nevada earlier this summer because of over heating but now I need to add it back and do something else to.   Another problem is that if you include all the hose and volume of wvo in my filter housing etc  Its at least 1.5 quarts of wvo that I have to burn ‘cold’.

I might get a faster heat-up if I unloop the return since I have hose in hose but that is a hassle.   If I leave the return looped the fuel flow will be very slow through the heat exchanger before the IP so the 12v heater can actually boost it above coolant temps almost instantly.  My veg therm is good for about 6-8F rise.  If I can get my veg temps to be 8F above the exact coolant temps almost instantly It might halve my diesel usage right now.  I have found some cheap exchangers on ebay like this one:

http://cgi.ebay.com/S-10-Plate-Brazed-Heat-Exchanger-SVO-Water-Therminator_W0QQitemZ250280466796QQcmdZViewItem?hash=item250280466796&_trkparms=72%3A552|39%3A1|66%3A2|65%3A12|240%3A1318&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&timeout=1218627981832

But I am not sure if its performance,  I don’t need much… Since I run a looped return the wvo will move slowly through this exchanger letting me use a smaller one with a lower BTU output.

I will let you know how it all goes!

Its been a long week. But many projects have been completed. Most importantly a couple days ago we finished converting my uncles 240D 4Spd. It now has a two tank system using his stock tank as the grease tank with a 6 gallon fuel cell in the trunk for diesel. The system cost was fairly low considering time forced us to buy quite a few expensive fittings that we could have found much cheaper if we had the time. Here is brief system overview:

Here is inside the engine bay. You can see the Vormax (heated filter housing) the Pollak switching valve, part of the looped return and Vegtherm 12V inline heater. We choose to keep the sacrificial filter inline because I don’t think you can ever have enough filtration and have caught some gunk with mine. We found a source of harder/thicker walled filters that seem to handle the heat much better. they are also completely transparent.

Here is a brass manifold that we use to send heat to the Vormax (filter housing) and a coolant line that we send to the trunk of the car that serves to pre-heat the incoming oil in a hose-on-hose insulated line.

Here is the insulated coolant out and veggie in lines wrapped in insulation and heat tape, with the coolant return and veggie return ran next to it.   Ideally these lines would be less exposed but this car will never go off-road and there is few animals to hit here in the high-desert.  It is also very hard on these cars to find a better place then this (though they do exist) so we took the easy way out and ran them here.

Keep in mind this car is going to be driven near Las Vegas.  Winters here are fairly mild.  I believe Hose IN Hose is a superior way to do run lines.  But it is more expensive, harder to install and requires some fairly special/custom fittings to make it work properly.   If this car was going to be driven in a place that actually gets below freezing with some kind of regularity I would have done it.  But here I believe this will be good enough 98% of the time.

This is the brass manifold that we use to put the coolant back into the system.  You can see part of the ball valve behind the fittings.  That valve constricts the flow of coolant to the heater core.  When you restrict the coolant flow from the heater core it forces it to go through the lines for the WVO system.  It works extremely well.  The brass fittings on both sides of this system cost I believe $75 total.  If we had access to better hardware stores that sold the correct types of plastic fittings we could have built both brass systems for maybe $20.  Don’t get me wrong I like the brass but it isn’t required.

Here is the 6 gallon marine fuel cell we are using as our start/stop diesel tank.  And we bent some aluminum hose around the stock tank to add a small amount of heat to the veggie oil.  It isn’t much but we had the stuff so why not?  Considering this is not a cold climate I believe this is more than enough to keep the oil hot enough to flow after the car is properly warmed up.  Many people in these areas run single tank kits.

And that is it,  the control panel is in the console and I don’t have a picture of it yet!  I will discuss this car more along with posting more pictures soon.   We have a in-line temp sensor just before the Injection pump the WVO gets up to 170F very quickly,  Just a couple minutes after the system is turned on and stays even at 65mph with very little line insulation.   Later on a better fuel tank(s) scheme may be put into action along with more modifications.  This system was intended to work better thank a single tank for little additional cost.  The diesel fuel cell was only $30 for example.

So far it seems to be a very simple and robust system that is easy to understand and follow.  I am very happy with the results!

This morning bright and early we began doing a ‘warm weather’ dual tank conversion on my uncles 240D. The car is virtually identical my 240D I am currently selling on ebay here: 240D Ebay Link Wish me luck on this auction! :)

I say its a warm weather conversion because he lives here in the high desert of Nevada. Now it does get cold in winter. He might even get a few days of below freezing temps. But for the most part he does not have to worry about the kind of weather conditions I do in the mid-west and up north. In the southwest single tank conversions are much more common but I am of the belief that vegetable oil should never be used as a cold starting fuel. My first conversion was a single tank, and I could start it up easily on straight veggie oil even in the low-mid 40’s. Now I had to wait several minutes for the system to warm up enough to give me adequate power but it worked.

The only way to really make single tank work when it gets into colder temps (Lets define colder as mid-50’s or below) is to blend the veggie oil with normal Diesel. (Biodiesel can gel/thicken up too!) Granted unless it was ‘REALLY’ cold outside (below 20’s) a 50/50 blend in a single tank would probably suffice. But see what is happening here… Lots of IF’s and Maybes. That is not good enough for me. I want to be running on pure veggie as long as I possibly can as quickly as I possibly can with no blending. I am not trying to knock on single tank conversions. But the more and more research I do the more and more I become convinced that starting and stopping the engine on the fuels it was designed for is the only way to go. It makes the conversion obviously more complicated. But when it is done right it makes your car more reliable, better in adverse weather and could possibly increase your engine life. Don’t forget veggie oil contains all sorts of acids/compounds/fats etc etc. Not found in normal diesel. It is still unknown what kinds of effects letting that veggie oil sit cold in your engine/injection pump for days/years could have on component longevity.

Sorry for the long-winded paragraph but we are just scratching the surface here. I am not a tribologist, nor a professional diesel/injection pump mechanic. I learn new things every day so do your own research and try to draw upon a large pool of good minds.

System Overview:
We are going to use his stock fuel tank as the veggie tank and add a small 8 gallon fuel cell for diesel to start and stop the car. Fuel cell is going to go into the trunk inside a fender well. We are going to reuse the steel fuel lines under the car and extend them into the trunk essentially keeping the stock diesel system the same just moving the tank farther back. We are going to use a wrap of coolant hose around the stock tank to add a small degree of heat (for the coldest days) and use a heavily insulated Hose-on-Hose line to the stock fuel tank from the engine bay. This will serve to add heat to the veggie oil soon as it is pulled from the tank. We are using a PlantDrive Racor filter housing to pre-heat and filter the oil. A standard Ford fuel selector valve for switching between tanks. A 12v Vegtherm in line heater to add more heat to the system and a looped return on the veggie line. A control panel will be installed where the ash-tray used to be. That is basically it.

Here is the engine bay before we touched anything. Gotta love how simple it all looks, To me anyway!

Here is the insulated Hose on Hose connection that will run from the engine bay to the stock fuel tank. It will be nicely tucked away once it is installed into its final location.

Here I am using a small section of 3/8″ fuel line I cut down its length to act as a grommet to keep future fuel lines from rubbing on the bare metal. This hole will be used for the fuel lines that run to the new fuel cell in the trunk.

Many, MANY more pictures and posts to come on this project.

Here is a basic layout of my current WVO system designed for Dumpster Fill. Meaning I needed a system robust enough to handle unprocessed/unfiltered/untreated or un-settled WVO. Literally pump/scoop or pour raw WVO into my grease tank and drive.

The Car: 1984 Mercedes Benz 300DT Turbo Diesel @ 103k miles.

The system is a mix between GoGreenEarly.com and PlantDrive.com components with a few custom twists.

Important System Components:
a) Custom ‘20mm Ammo Can’ 8.5 Gallon Grease Tank of GoGreenEarly design (entire top can be taken off)
b) Hose-In-Hose grease input line
c) GoGreenEarly Heated Dual-Filter Housing
d) Off the shelf ford dual-tank switching valve
e) PlantDrive 3-way Valve for Looped-Return
f) PlantDrive VegTherm 12V 3/8″ hose in-line heater

Numerous other small tweaks and modifications.   The whole point is to get the grease in the tank as hot as possible as soon as possible and keep it hot until it gets into the injection pump just like with most WVO systems.   A in-tank large particle filter catches heavy items such as fries and chunks of food.  The dual filters on the heated housing catch everything else.   Using a Hose-in-Hose fuel line allows you to prevent gelling in the fuel lines under the car.  Effectively allowing me to burn even hydrogenated oil in the dead of winter.

Many concerns exist about dumpster-fill.  Such as suspended water, fats, tannins and possible contamination.  A growing number of people issue concern over something called ‘Cativation’.  In short it is the process of tiny droplets of water suspended in the oil boiling explosively in the chaotic zones of positive and negative pressure inside the Injection Pump.  These micro-explosions may have enough power to pit and scar the metal surfaces inside the IP.  Causing wear that will act like Erosion.   A very large number of people still doubt its over-all risk in WVO systems it is something I am keeping a close eye on.

Considering that when I dumpster-fill I am not doing any pre-tank filtering at all.  I do NOT advocate dumpster-fill as the safest way to protect your engine while running WVO.   Infact I feel is much more risky and should only be done when you accept the risks.   I do believe however that the system I am running will allow me to reduce some of the risks.  The heated tank gets up to 160F causing water to evaporate and steam off or sink to the bottom of the tank to be cleaned out later.

So far this system has proven to be very robust,  I have logged over 20,000 miles almost exclusively on dumpster-fill.   Obviously when I am able to I heat and filter before running I will.  But it is nice to have the freedom to just drive.   It remains to be seen if in another 20k I will have to face a Injection Pump rebuild.

I will go into much more detail soon with numerous pictures of the system and how it works.  But its a beautiful day outside and I hope to go take some pictures!