Any Performence lose with WVO? - Diesel Forum

Greasy Mc Grease · 10-09-2008, 01:54 AM

Hi there, is there any noticeable performance lose with WVO?

Swellmel · 10-09-2008, 02:52 PM

I feel a small power loss, not that much though...

MAILMANWV · 10-10-2008, 10:45 PM

no, not in my 97 psd. of course im anal about my whole process. filtered to 1(one) micron then going through a racor fs1000 (heated) 2 micron. all oil has been dated and settled for at least 5 (five) months. got 1100 gallons in stock now!!!

hheynow · 10-12-2008, 10:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MAILMANWV

no, not in my 97 psd. of course im anal about my whole process. filtered to 1(one) micron then going through a racor fs1000 (heated) 2 micron. all oil has been dated and settled for at least 5 (five) months. got 1100 gallons in stock now!!!

Nice try but I don't buy it. I have a '97 and am anal about my oil too. It's non-hydro oil, settled for months, passes through a 1 micron absolute filter and passes the hot pan test with zero bubbles. What you don't consider is VO's higher auto ignition temperature (than #2) which causes a very slight delay in combustion. It makes our timing retarded which cuts down on optimal power plus VO has less BTUs than #2. So I see poorer acceleration (than #2) on VO and have less power but since its cost is attractive

I can live with its short comings.

Homemade WRX · 10-13-2008, 02:58 PM

^^^as he stated, vegetable oil is similar to putting higher octane in a gas motor...slows burn rate. Now in the otto cycle, its used to raise the detonation threshold. Not what we want in the diesel cycle. More cylinder pressure will however increase combustion rate/flame propogation speed.

That's why I want to play around with leaning it out and adding water though...

luckuslucas · 10-13-2008, 05:48 PM

I notice a slight power loss, but not enough to worry about. I can still pull a trailer up a hill as fast as I want, so I don't really care if it takes a tiny bit longer to get up to speed.

vegistroker73L · 10-14-2008, 08:33 AM

Your average waste vegetable oil (it varies a bit from soy to canola to peanut, etc...) has about 120,000 BTUs per gallon. Number two diesel has 138,500 BTUs per gallon. That deficit of 18,500 BTUs per gallon of fuel must therefore translate to a loss of power. What that means in terms of horsepower and torque I'm not really sure, but I can attest that over the weekend I was running fully loaded (no major grades though) with 2000lbs in the bed and didn't notice any marked difference like higher RPMs, sluggishness on the highway, or any other sign of power loss.

rsr911 · 10-15-2008, 01:07 AM

I've got 5000-6000 miles on various blends of WVO and solvent thinners such as kerosene, ULSD, RUG, naptha, acetone, and PGT. I do notice a slight loss in power as well as fuel economy. I notice it when I run the tank low and put a few gallons of ULSD in, I feel an increase in power and faster passing at freeway speeds, around town it's hard to notice. My van runs noticeably quieter on WVO blends. Like others have mentioned I don't mind the slight loss in power given the huge cost advantages. I run as high as 90/10 in warm weather. It's colder now so I'm running 67/23/10 WVO/kero/RUG and using my block heater if the van is dead cold, more than 8 hours. I've got a couple of bad glow plugs though so the block heater would likely not be needed if they were working.

The downside to WVO for me has been sort of an upside, it's cleaned a lot of gunk out of my tank and lines which has resulted in lift pump and filter trouble. Lately though my on board filters have been spotless. I'm using the John Galt upflow settling method and a 2 micron filter. I pass the HPT with zero bubbles. I pumped the bottom ten gallons out of my upflow drum the other day and got water, sendiment, and fats. I can get up to 10 gallons a day through it but prefer to do 5 per day. I stockpile cleaned oil for blending. My fresh oil only sits for a week before upflow settling.

BTW I've found that PGT (pure gum turpentine) helps bring some power back, it's supposed to increase the cetane rating and acetone dissolves any fatty acids that get past my settling and filtration, I use both at 1% or less, typically 1 quart of each for a 30 gallon batch. I also run my own used motor oil and trans fluid.

Someday I'd like to build a still of some sort and clean up the solvent waste from work for use as a thinner. We wind up with about 30-50 gallons a month of a mix of MEK, toluene, NMP, and naptha. The company would be glad to give it to me rather than pay to get rid of it.

As an aside we had an OTR trucker in yesterday with a homebuilt hydrogen generator on is rig. It's a modified Volvo putting out around 800hp according to him. He said he gets 9mpg with the generator and 6 without. His belief was that the hydrogen causes the diesel to burn more completely and thus increase power and economy. It was simple enough I'd like to build my own.