Bio-Diesel for Home heating oil

[Blue07CivicEX]

I will be completely honest I didn't search this before posting I was in a hurry on my way out the door and wanted to see peoples opinions when I get back.

Has anybody done Bio-Diesel to replace home heating oil? If so is it the same as doing Bio-D for a car or do you make any changes?

Thanks, I apologize if this is a repeat Q.

[Ryland]

it should be the same as doing it for a car, or you could go with straight waste oil if you have a oil tank tht is inside, other wise you would need to heat it and even then heating it might be needed, if you had the oil and were just looking for something to burn it in then running a diesel generator and using the waste heat from that to heat your house would be the way to go.

[dremd]

I'd try and go for SVO for home heating; no use using up all that good Methanol/ lye. You would however most likely need a tank / line heater ( could use boiler heat).
I bet it has been done. Nobody uses Home Heating oil around here, so I'm not of much use.

Diesel Genset is also a good Idea.
Or sell BioDiesel and Buy Electricity.

[ebacherville]

i would think you could as long as your tank is kept warm bio has a tendancey to gell quicker than regular diesel.

[}{ead$hot Zod]

Check with the manufacturer. You may only be able to use B20. It needs some petro to set off the flame. Unless you are using a unit like the one from econo-heat. ymmv.

[fshagan]

Careful guys ... this is in people's homes, where they sleep. Every year people die of carbon monoxide poisoning in homes due to fouled or poorly maintained equipment.

Oil boilers are not equipped to burn animal fat, waste fry oil, or even ASTM certified biodiesel. There is a formulation for home heating oil that is a bio-diesel blend called "Bioheat", and it is certified to work:

Biodiesel is produced from raw vegetable oils or animal fats, but the oil or fat must go through the chemical reaction (called transesterification) to make it into biodiesel and be tested to make sure it meets D 6751 before it is blended with heating oil. Unreacted or only partially reacted oils not meeting D 6751 can accelerate instability and contamination issues, create fouling and additional cold flow concerns, and increase hazardous emissions of formaldehyde and other aldehydes. Raw vegetable oils, cooking oil or animal fats do not meet D 6751, should not be blended with heating oil, and cannot be used to create Bioheat® fuel.

From Biodiesel.org - Home Heating Oil

If you've ever seen the effects of a "puff back" of an oil fired boiler ... and the resulting film of oil soot on everything in the house that can cost thousands of dollars to clean ... or taken a call from a distraught parent who just watched the ambulance take the cold lifeless body of their two year old ... you would have the same reaction I did to this thread.

Sorry about being so dramatic, but I have very, very bad memories of dealing with these issues.

Aero-mod your cars all you want but be careful with home heating projects.

[ebacherville]

Co2 detectors are very cheap insurance.. we have them in our home since we have a wood burner.

[ebacherville]

best solution a outside hot water boiler designed to run off waste oil, then you can run veggie waste crank case oil and trans fluid etc..

[fshagan]

Don't get me wrong, properly maintained and adjusted for what they are burning, boilers and furnaces are safe. But if you are not an expert, you can make mistakes that can be very dangerous. So I would go with solutions that are proven and approved by your local code agency.

One case I dealt with was an elderly couple who noticed how cool it was in their basement during the summer, and they adapted the forced air venting to allow them to draw the cool basement air into their ductwork and distribute it around the house. What they didn't realize is that in doing so, they changed the atmospheric pressure in the basement; it was now negative, instead of positive, and when winter came and the heater turned on, the flue gasses spilled into the basement instead of going out the flue pipe. They both died.

Like ebacherville, I have CO detectors because they are cheap insurance. But people turn them off because they think they are malfunctioning; they don't smell anything, and the damn things keep alarming. One of the cases I dealt with was a medical doctor who turned off the CO detector and realized what was happening when his daughter vomited, and he noticed her lips were blue. He realized then what he knew from his training, that she was getting poisoned by the carbon monoxide. Because it is odorless and colorless, he was relying on his senses rather than the detector. He was also probably affected by the CO himself. So if the alarm goes off, open the doors and windows and get outside. Even if you think its a false alarm.

[ebacherville]

we have a CO detector and we have had it go off just briefly when we opene the fire place door to long .. trying to load wood.. needless to dsay we opened a window and it stopped and never came back on ..

Our detector is near the wood stove so its really sensitive.. we also have one on the other side of the house.. redundancy is a good thing.