[jga2z]

I am on a VERY limited budget so I am wondering if it's possible to use only bag filters to filter my pre-settled W85 mix. My WMO has insignificant amounts of liquid contamination (water, AntiFreeze)

The ultimate chepo plan is to suck off top of a settled WMO barrel then blend to W85 (or maybe 50/50-60/40 WMO/D2), settle out, use a jean leg filter then a 10 micron poly felt bag, settle more, then a 1 or 2 micron polyfelt bag before going into tank.
Does this sound like it could work without major problems?

I plan on a multiple spin on filter up flow setup when I have the money which I think i can put together for around $100 since I already have some of the components.

 

[RT]

My experience is that the great majority of the contaminants settle out after the RUG is added and the mix is allowed to settle. I take the settled W85 through a centrifuge and I can remove another two or three tablespoons of ultrafine gunk with several hours of centrifuging. There is probably 1/2-1 inch of gunk in the bottom of the settling barrel. I think you'll be fine. Don't waste your money on diesel. You're lucky with respect to your vehicles as well. Advancing your timing about 4° is what rsr911 did to reduce his smoking and it doesn't cost anything for you.

 

[jga2z]

Since I am not planning on driving this truck more than 12-1500 miles a year I don't really need to process a large quantity of WMO at any time. I have enough WMO to last a year as of now. If bag filters will do the job on a small scale OK I'll settle on that for now.

Even if this was my only vehicle I only drive 3-4k miles a year total.
However if gas goes up much more I will be driving the truck on W85 more.

 

[F250Truckin]

Set your bag filters up so you can back flush them and that will be the end of that expense as well.

 

[rsr911]

For that kind of mileage I'd set up some free barrels, stir in the gasoline, let settle until needed and just skim off the top and into the tank. Chances are you'll plug an onboard filter anyway as has happened to most WVO and WMO user I know. Leave the last 5 inches or so in the barrel for the next batch. FWIW I pour clean compressor oil straight into my tank when we change it at work, never had a problem. Upflows, CF's, and staged filters are aimed at much larger quantities of fuel. You only need like 100 gallons a year. Upflow IS controlled settling. Settling after blending should work great all by itself IF you skim the cleanest fuel from the top of the drum and don't disturb the crud on the bottom.

 

[Jeffrey S Brooks]

I make waste oil diesel fuel in 20 gallon batches. I blend waste oil at 80% with gasoline at 20% and have not put pump diesel into my engine in more than a year. After blending, I settle my blend for about 48 hours. I drain off the bottom of the blending tank 1/2 gallon of sludge every 12 hours. Once 10% of the blend has been drained off as sludge, I then filter through 2 y-traps with 40, then 80 mesh screens in them, then to one 1-micron 20" bag filter. I also back-flush that bag filter immediately after processing my blend with clean gasoline, then I blend that dirty gasoline with the next batch of waste oil to be processed. So, my system is pretty cheap to operate and works well.

 

[jga2z]

Got my filter bags today and I'm rethinking my processing method a bit.
My thought now is I don't really want to deal with the issue of tuning my engine to the W85 and all the potential white smoking as I work it out. Just sticking to a WMO D2 blend.

Again at this point I'm not going to be driving this truck more than 200-250 miles a month so it'll be hard to dial in the best mix so I plan on small batches to test run.
I'm starting with 40 gal of WMO in my settling barrel which was filtered down with a heavy cotton T-shirt. I'd like to mix some RUG with it, but I only want to add as little as possible to effect enhanced settling. 10% would do that but how little a % of RUG would work? My WMO stock is 95% 10/40 oil, 5% ATF.
Then I'll filter 5 gals of that mixed with D2 (70/30-50/50 ???) thru 10 micron bag, to 5 micron bag, let settle for a couple days then thru a 1 micron bag and into the truck.

More comments please:icon_smile:

 

[rsr911]

My IDI does not smoke excessively on W85 in stock tune, but it does smoke a little. I get more power and almost zero smoke with the timing advanced 4 degrees. I get normal IDI start up smoke. I also get black smoke on heavy acceleration due to my fuel screw being turned up. The truck runs the same on D2 or W85. In other words tuning is not necessary on the IDI's. I did not advance my timing originally to reduce smoke, I did it for more power and a side benefit was a very clean idle and part throttle.

 

[jga2z]

This truck already has a bit of white smoke, and moderate smell of D2 all the time at idle. This obviously isn't normal, but it in no way seems to affect performance as the likely causes for white smoke on D2 would (starts easy, idles/runs smooth as glass).
Haven't really seen black smoke ever, although it's kinda hard to tell as exhaust has a flowmaster with pipe turned down and out ending just ahead of rear axle. Even the 1 time I did a test run pulling my 27ft 5th wheel.
I was shocked this truck pulls that camper WAY better than the '90 F350 w/Banks turbo. I am not at all lacking for power.
I have no idea where timing is set now, and no real way to check it.

 

[Jeffrey S Brooks]

...I'm starting with 40 gal of WMO in my settling barrel which was filtered down with a heavy cotton T-shirt. I'd like to mix some RUG with it, but I only want to add as little as possible to effect enhanced settling. 10% would do that but how little a % of RUG would work? My WMO stock is 95% 10/40 oil, 5% ATF.
Then I'll filter 5 gals of that mixed with D2 (70/30-50/50 ???) thru 10 micron bag, to 5 micron bag, let settle for a couple days then thru a 1 micron bag and into the truck.

More comments please:icon_smile:

It is possible to make a very simple, primitive filtering system to make waste-oil-blend-diesel fuel. The trick in making a simple, but effective system is to understand that blending gasoline with waste oils will do most of the work for you.

However, the less gasoline you blend in, the longer the settling time, because precipitation rate is a function of fluid density verses particle density. Since WMO is a saturated solution containing free-carbon, and free-carbon is not significant more dense than the petroleum oil medium, then adding more gasoline will decrease the settling time.

1) Simply add gasoline at 15-20% to any waste oil.
2) Let it settle for 1-3 days
3) either drain off the sludge, or pour off the top the thin waste-oil-blend-diesel fuel.
4) Filter it down to 1-5 microns.

People in England who make waste-oil-diesel fuel tend to be more frugal than most people, so they commonly filter through bed sheets. The trick with using rags as waste-oil-blend-diesel fuel filters is any seem in the cloth is going to have a much larger pore size than the cloth itself. These large pores could easily allow particles through your filtering process

 

[jga2z]

Here's today's update.
I have been using a chepo HF drill pump on my air drill since I'm not doing much volume.
Sucking of top of 55 gal setting for a week barrel Filled 2 5gal cans thru 10 micron bag added 5%RUG, set 24 hrs. sucked 2 qts off bottom then...
Pumped thru 5 micron bag:
1 5 gal can W85
1 5 gal can 70(5%RUG blend)/30 D2
and 1 5 gal can of straight WMO from big barrel

I'm going to pump the W85 and 70/30 mix thru a 1 micron bag tomorrow night in to clean cans for trial runs in the truck the following day.

Any thoughts on whether I should try W85 or the 70/30 mix 1st? It's around 100 deg here this week. I plan on just 2-3 gal in the Front tank which is near empty but was running fine on D2 till I switched to 1/3 full rear tank a week ago.

 

[Jeffrey S Brooks]

I don't think it matters much which blend you try first, but you might want to give it a few days running on each mix

 

[jga2z]

I'm gonna keep my fingers crossed that my processing was adequate to result in problem free running.
I am planning on using the truck to pull the 5th wheel to the lake 45 miles this Friday. I have a spare fuel filter as I have no idea how long the current one has been on.

 

[jga2z]

My IDI does not smoke excessively on W85 in stock tune, but it does smoke a little. I get more power and almost zero smoke with the timing advanced 4 degrees. I get normal IDI start up smoke. I also get black smoke on heavy acceleration due to my fuel screw being turned up. The truck runs the same on D2 or W85. In other words tuning is not necessary on the IDI's. I did not advance my timing originally to reduce smoke, I did it for more power and a side benefit was a very clean idle and part throttle.

Can I do a seat of the pants timing advance? I don't want to fork out the cash for a timing tool.
I use to do my 'shade tree' dyno tune on old SBC Chevy's with AT's by power braking the car to 1500 RPM and rotating the distributor til I got the most torque without pinging. Worked better than a timing light :lol:

 

[Jeffrey S Brooks]

If your blend is right you won't need to advance your timing

 

[jga2z]

Well after heading out all loaded up on Friday afternoon and losing the belt tensioner assembly from a broken bolt 10 miles from home, getting towed back home, replacing the whole tensioner assembly by 11pm, I left again noon Sat and made the 120 round trip to the lake returning tonight.
I started the trip running on the front tank with 9 gal (left 1/2 gal in ea 5 gal can as an extra precaution) of W85 on top of 1-2 gal D2 left in the tank. Ran D2 at start up, and shut down.
Ran fine, but it's hard to tell what differences I experienced as opposed to D2 as I have not driven this truck on D2 more than 30 miles since I got it, and only a test run of ~4 miles pulling the 28ft 5th wheel.
It appeared to burn a majority of the W85 on the way, so I added 4.5 gal of my other mix of 70% WMO-30% D2 for the return trip.
Ran fine on the way back as well. My guesstimate is ~10mpg for the trip.
I don't notice as much white smoke at cold idle now as I did on D2 ??? Nor do I smell as much raw D2 in exhaust. It runs a lot quieter all around.
Since it's gonna be around 100 degrees all week (and I got the AC blowing nice and cold) I'm going to drive around town on W85 and see what happens.
Crossing my fingers I won't have to change a filter on the side of the road.

 

[jga2z]

Well I recalculated my usage when I mixed together the leftovers of the 3 5 gal cans I had started with and ended up with 3 gal which I refiltered thru a 1mic bag and poured in the truck yesterday.

The 2 issues I find so far running on W85 are,
1) It is harder to start cold on W85. Had to crank for ~4sec @95deg. On D2 it takes maybe 2 sec.
2) It smokes noticeably more at start up, but only a bit more when idling.
I suppose both of these issues can be solved by switching to the D2 tank (rear) before shut down. I did this last night but only about a 3/4 of a mile from home and it still was hard to start today.

Since I titled this thread about bag filters I should comment on that a bit.
I have been pumping off the top of a 55 gal drum which has been settling for over a week thru a 10 micron into a 5 gal can with the 15% RUG already in it. let set for a couple of days, than pour thru a 5 micron bag, then a 1 micron bag, let set for a day and thru the 1 mic bag again before pouring into truck.
About 140 miles on the W85 so far. We'll see how long I can go before the old fuel filter starts clogging up, hopefully a while.

 

[Jeffrey S Brooks]

Well I recalculated my usage when I mixed together the leftovers of the 3 5 gal cans I had started with and ended up with 3 gal which I refiltered thru a 1mic bag and poured in the truck yesterday.

The 2 issues I find so far running on W85 are,
1) It is harder to start cold on W85. Had to crank for ~4sec @95deg. On D2 it takes maybe 2 sec.
2) It smokes noticeably more at start up, but only a bit more when idling.
I suppose both of these issues can be solved by switching to the D2 tank (rear) before shut down. I did this last night but only about a 3/4 of a mile from home and it still was hard to start today.

Up thread you had said you were blending WMO at 70% with D2 at 30%. I would expect that blend would be hard to start and smoke.

Since I titled this thread about bag filters I should comment on that a bit.
I have been pumping off the top of a 55 gal drum which has been settling for over a week thru a 10 micron into a 5 gal can with the 15% RUG already in it. let set for a couple of days, than pour thru a 5 micron bag, then a 1 micron bag, let set for a day and thru the 1 mic bag again before pouring into truck.
About 140 miles on the W85 so far. We'll see how long I can go before the old fuel filter starts clogging up, hopefully a while.

I am a bit surprised that WMO-85 is hard starting and smoking, but you could try adding more gasoline to your blend. I find 80% WMO to 20% RUG works for me.

Also, you may find blending before settling, then filtering will work more efficiently.

 

[jga2z]

Keeping it simple...
Here's were I'm at with processing the last few 5 gal batches.
I'm pumping the WMO off the top of the 55 gal drum into the 10u bag into a 5 gal tote with 3qts RUG already in it. This get me the W85.
I'm then immediately pouring that jug thru a 5u bag into another can and let it settle for a couple of days.
I then pour it thru a 1u bag, wait a day then thru a 1u bag again and into the truck.

So far 15 gal like this, using up 5 gal driving and 10 gal in waiting.
A total of 20+ gal W85 ran thru the truck and all is good. Well except for the bit of hard starting on W85 which I have been going into on another thread.

 

[Jeffrey S Brooks]

Congratulations on making yourself some WMO fuel. As you can see one can make blended fuels with fairly primitive material.