Vegetable Oil

You can check my blogs here to get you started. But be warned it is not for the faint of heart.

http://cr4.globalspec.com/thread/4759
http://cr4.globalspec.com/blogentry/5252/Vegetable-Oil-Heating-Revisited-Part-1
http://cr4.globalspec.com/blogentry/5326/Vegetable-Oil-Heating-Revisited-Part-2
http://cr4.globalspec.com/blogentry/5402/Vegetable-Oil-Heating-Revisited-Part-3
http://cr4.globalspec.com/blogentry/7590/Vegetable-Oil-Heating-a-New-Air-Pump

If you've ever seen a kitchen grease fire, you know cooking oil has a lot of heat value.Used oil is more viscous than fuel oil.This affects the spray pattern.The orifice nozzle will probably need to be changed or bored out.You need to filter it well. Auto repair shops often burn used motor oil for heat in the winter. It may be useful to study that kind of system for ideas.

Except #1and 2 it is a fools errand, but it seems, somebody needs to be....

Mother earth has some great input on this type project as dangerous as it can be. A good project would try a USED FUNACE outside or in an unattached garage. Possibly the neighbors shed. Then when you have it right, try convincing the little lady who seems more interested in having a home than saving a bit on heat..

You're playing with fire....oh boy!

Do you want your whole house to smell like french fries, lol?

Frankd20 seems to have the info you are looking for (read one post and looked very good, GA BTW!). this may be in one of those blogs, but the main point is VO is more viscous (thicker) then diesel #2 or WMO, and is more challenging to atomize. As pointed out it also has a lower heat value. once you address effectively burning VO, you will face how to keep a constant supply and how to keep organics from growing in it. As for smelling the fumes, if you smell fumes you most likely have a heat exchanger leak (bad). Let us know how it goes! and Good luck.

Everyone seems to think that heating with WVO will make your house smell like fries or fish or whatever the oil was used for but this is not the case. It seems this is like a running joke if you talk about burning WVO, someone always comes back with something like, I hope you like the smell of fries.

I think this belief comes from the fact that cars that have been converted to WVO do smell, I have been behind them and yes it does smell.

In heating you are burning the oil more completely and at a higher temperature than a car. When I was designing my burner I had it in a steel kiln brick lined test box and when it was running and I had my nose right near the exhaust, I did not smell anything like fries or fish or really any smell. When my system is running there is no detectable smell of anything unusual around my house. I would go so far to say that HHO has a more detectable and worse smell than a properly running WVO system.

To the point of safety, any fire is dangerous and needs to be controlled and contained correctly. My system is designed with many more fail safes than a regular HHO system. If the air or oil pressure or flow goes too high or low it shuts down. If the flame goes out or doesn't lite or a tiny puff of smoke or CO comes out where it should not, it shuts down. If it gets too hot above the system or the water gets too hot it shuts down. If it really gets too hot a sprinkler over it will turn on. A number of times the system has shut down mostly because of dirt in the fuel lowered the flow. For this reason I have a natural gas boiler that automatically switches on in the event the WVO system shuts off. I would rather have my system shut down for me so much as looking at it wrong than not have it running optimally and safely.