I want to take this time to remind everyone who owns a waste oil boiler several things. If you already know the following things consider this a refresher course.
Waste oil burners/ boilers cost way too much money not to maintain them to the best of your ability. If you want to get the maximum savings from them while reducing the chances of having them break down or clog up than it would be wise to take notes.
What Type of Fuel Can I Burn?
Any oil with a flash point of 400 degrees or less and up to 90 weight. Used motor oils, brake fluid, gear lubricants, automatic transmission fluid, industrial oils and diesel fuel are acceptable. Do not add gasoline, paint thinner, chlorinated solvents or antifreeze to your tank.
The majority of the people who owner waste oil boilers/ burners are going to burn used motor oil. Its the most readily available substance out of all the possible substances that you can burn. Having said that you can use any other oil with a flash point of 400 degrees or less and up to 90 weight. Besides used motor oil this can include brake fluid, power steering fluid, gear lubricants (including 75W-90 and 80W-90), various industrial oils, any automatic transmission fluids (Mecron or Dextron), and of course diesel fuel.
You can use vegetable oil in your machine as well. If you know someone who owns a restaurant than he/ she more than likely has tons of this stuff. Please take note of two things if you decide to use vegetable oil! You want to make sure the temperature stays above 50 degrees or it will quickly clog up the filters and it must be mixed 50/50 with either used motor oil, transmission fluid, or diesel. If you have a 55 gallon drum of waste oil and a 55 gallon drum of used vegetable oil than you can combine them to make 110 gallons of usable fuel for your oil burner.
Oil Holding Tanks
Its been a common misconception that you cannot burn any synthetic oil. That’s not true. Like vegetable oil you just need to make sure that its combined with the other type of 100% acceptable oil. The main reason for this, which holds true for vegetable oil as well, is that those oils alone do not burn well when they get ignited.
You do not burn gasoline, paint thinners, or any solvents with chlorine in your boiler. You will mess it up. You also want to make certain that little to no antifreeze or water gets into your oil burner as well.
Why is It So Important to Filter the Oil?
Your oil boiler/ burner works by spraying a fine mist of used oil combined with air through a very small nozzle which is then ignited (by an “ignitor” on top of the nozzle). This creates a mass amount of heat which if its an oil furnace the heat just heats up tubes in which air gets blown across it to make it hot. If its a boiler than it the heat flows through tubes in the boiler chamber which heats up water that’s flowing across it.
Whats my point?
My point is that if your fuel going into your oil boiler is not clean it will quickly clog up the nozzle. The nozzle is smaller than you think and can get clogged up fairly easily. You want a fine mist being sprayed from the nozzle and anything more or less will produce less than efficient results. And this is the reason why most people have problems with this machine after only a short period of time. They forget to filter whatever oil they are putting into their oil burner/ boiler/furnace.
Oil Burner Nozzle
How Do I Filter the Oil?
Most people filter the oil going before it goes into their waste oil holding tank with a stainless steel 30-60 micron filter. Most companies say 140 micron is fine but I like to go above and beyond the minimum with my boiler. A 30 micron filter will plug up faster than a 140 micron filter but those filters are cheap compared with a new boiler or down time costs.
If you want to be an overachiever and go way beyond the recommended standards to provide the very best filtering and make it easy on yourself in the long run you need an oil centrifuge. This is the very best item you can get to complement your oil burner besides a Becket fuel economizer. This machine literally spins all the moisture and dirt out of your used motor oil making it close to fresh motor oil as you can get without re-refining it.
How much Fuel do Oil Boilers use?
A lot of the companies that sell these units will give you set figures. I have found that all the figures are generalizations and not reliable. Your usage will have a lot of variables including how much room it has to heat. The time of the month will also have an effect on your oil usage. In the summertime I barely burn 4 gallons a day. In January I burn a little over 20 gallons per day. Its best to have a spreadsheet and track it to find out your individual oil usage so you can plan accordingly.
Tags: gear lube, holding tank, nozzle, oil boiler, Oil Burner, Oil Furnace, transmission oil, vegetable oil
We were thinking about getting one of those things out here in Bird Creek. I think I can get a large supply of waste oil from several guys down the road, maybe at a nearby ski resort, and that could alone could heat our cabin.
Yeah my company got one of those oil furnaces almost a year ago. It keep going out because of that same reason that you talked about. Guys were just dumping the oil into the boiler tanks without even thinking about cleaning it. There was antifreeze and probably a lot of water in some of that oil. Thats wasn’t my department so I just kept my mouth shut about it. Finally the boss just sold it. He didn’t want the headache anymore
I used to be the manager at one of the Jiffy Lubes in town and we bought one of these waste oil furnace. It was an Omni It seemed like a win win situation since obviously we generated 100s of gallons of used waste oil every day. We used it to heat the whole shop and it worked great for a while but it kept breaking down. We had to call a guy out every couple weeks. I think a lot of the guys were being careless and putting bad oil into the thing. I even think some of them were dumping antifreeze in it (???) I started taking a more hands on approach to the whole thing and we stopped having those problems. We had a few problems but when you run that machine as much as we did you expect some things to happen.
Thats for the info. Good posts. Can you tell me what the big difference is between an oil furnace and an oil boiler??? I am kind of confused as to how they work?
Tom,
Thanks. They are almost the same in principal. They both run on used waste oil. They each have a small nozzle in which oil is sprayed out and then ignited or burned. The difference is what happens after this. With an oil furnace that heat is transferred to tubes in which air passes by those tubes and is than heated. The hot air coming out of the furnace than heats the room. With a boiler that heat still goes through tubes but those tubes transfer heat to water which is then pumped through the the walls of a building emitting heat through them as they travel. The water then goes back to the boiler to be re-heated and process starts all over again. The second one, boilers, are known to be a lot more efficient and better because that heat does not dry up the air and while it takes a while for a room to heat up it can stay heated over a longer period of time after the boiler is turned off
Can you tell us roughly how much these things cost? How much does the oil burner plus hook up plus installation?? I think I may be able to buy a used one in my area but I don’t have any idea how to hook it up to the rest of my house and switch from natural gas. Thanks, great site
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nice post, i think this can be a good way to handle used oil, it can make a difference in heating costs and there isn’t much else to do with it.