What is the Best Way to Heat Vegetal Oil?

I suppose the answer lies partly in how much you want to raise the temperature, and how much oil you have to heat. For heating anything in a home, natural gas is more efficient (both ecologically and in cost) than heating things electrically. (Power plants are about 30% efficient in getting energy to a home.)

In a car, an electrical heater (which you could plug into the cigarette lighter socket) would be convenient, but inefficient. Hot water heating would be more efficient, but would only work after the engine is warmed up, and would require adding some plumbing. Another possibility would be to use a heat exchanger on the exhaust system (possibly using water/steam as an intermediate step, to reduce flammability concerns). This would require some engineering.

What will the hot oil be used for?

It will be use for , in the car, as fuel in replacement of diesel fuel and for home , for heating purpose.

for the car , the optimal temp. is around 180 to 200 F

Michel

The diesel should be able to provide adequate waste heat for the oil.

On start up a battery powered heater would likely be the best bet.

Maybe that 'wheel' has already been invented or cobbled for you.

The vegetable oil will require a limited amount of treatment to get it suitable for road fuel use. The (in)famous UK motoring journalist Jeremy Clarkson recently demonstrated an elderly diesel-engined Volvo 740, which ran all day on a private circuit on a mix of 97% recovered used vegetable oil, having been filtered to remove particulates to an unspecified level, and 3% white spirit as a fuel. Reportedly, "it smelled like an old chip shop" while running! In the UK it is illegal to use this as a fuel on a public road, whether home-brewed or not, without duty being paid to HM Revenue and Customs in the same way as duty is paid on other liquid fuels for road use that are normally purchased at road-side pumps; with a pump purchase the duty is paid as part of the transaction.

There are plenty of websites on bio-diesels where more can be read on this subject.

In selecting a vegetable blend to be used on any particular engine, the constituents of the raw material need to be assessed for compatibility with the materials of construction of the engine and its fuel delivery system, particularly elastomeric components. Without this assessment, the engine won't last very long and a day might not be long enough...

Poseidonqc,

Without going into your vegetable oil "quality" issues, in general I would recommend for the car, heating the oil from the engine coolant circuit (whether you have an electric heater for a small portion of it, or you have a small tank of diesel fuel for starting and engine warm up, as necessary).

For home use, preheating it electrically sounds best, at least to the point where it flows easily enough to pump into any additional preheater you may have installed at the burner itself.

Regards, Greg