Fuel capacity and Veggie Oil

CH

chuckd

Advanced Member
Joined
Nov 2, 2002
Messages
68
Location
Stillwater
The first part of this post is easy. Does anyone with a twin to my Volvo i.e. ex Knight transportation know the capcity of each of the fuel tanks. I think they may be 75 and 125, but not sure.

Next, I am looking at converting the large tank to be able to use recycled veggie oil. No I am not a flaming liberal - former Marine circa 1967 1968. But recent articles in Home Power magazines have intrigued me about bio diesel or straight veggie oil. I am interested in Bio diesel because I work for a consortium of folks trying to make ethanol production something other than a farm subsidie program. One of the ways to make biodiesel is to use ethanol.

Now you can use straight veggie oil as the good mr Diesel actually invented his first engine to run on peanut oil.

Straight veggie oil cannot be used to start your engine, need petro, so you start and stop on petro and use veggie inbetween. Downside of veggie, none so far. It runs, much, much cleaner, has more power and slightly better fuel economy. Can't afford new, but people are using restaurant oil that they clean. (My son is in the restaurant business ergo, I have a source).

Anyway the folks who have modified vehicles are in Mo and I may go visit them.

anythoughts from the closet tree huggers out there?

Chuck
 
I don't have any input for you. I am real interested in the outcome of your research. I've talked to a few others over the years that have done much the same with decent results but didn't pay attention to the details at the time.

Tally this reply up to "you are not alone" in your interest. Keep us updated (I know you will).
 
Chuck,

IM no authority on this subject and am not a tree hugger, althought like everyone else, I want to live in a clean environment. IMO, lots of govt regulations concerning engines and fuels are unnecessary, expensive, and counter productive in some cases.

I know the use of various types of oils such as cooking/veggie/used crankcase oils are increasingly being used in diesel engines with no known downside.

If you do a search for "bio diesel" on Google, I think you will find lots of information on this subject.

I converted 5 or 6 of those Knight trucks. As I recall fuel tank size is as you stated. You might consider running a mixture of diesel/cooking oil in both tanks.

You would have to alter the fuel system to run say, vegatable oil from one tank alone. These systems supply a considerable amount of excess fuel to the engine. The excess fuel is returned to the fuel tanks through separate fuel lines in approximately equal amounts, to both tanks.

If I ever find the right situation, i.e. if I locate a source for cooking oil, I'll try it myself.

onezman

http://onezman.tripod.com/whitehotrvhauler
 
You just need to multiply the Area of the cylinder's circle, times the height of the cylinder.

Area = Pi * (radius * radius)
Volume = Area * Height

The only thing is all the units must be the same. For example, if you measure the radius in inches, the height must be measured in inches, then the result will be in cubic inches, which you can convert to gallons or whatever on the volume conversion page.

The radius is 1/2 the diameter.

As an example, I will calculate for a tank with a diameter of 100 inches and a height of 100 inches.

Area = 3.14 * (50 inches * 50 inches) = 7,850 square inches
Volume = 7,850 square inches * 100 inches = 785,000 cubic inches

You could then convert cubic inches to whatever you need on the volume conversion page.

1 cubic inches = 0.00432900431 gallons
 
The fuel capacity of each tank should be engraved on the tank near the fill cap. Each tank is required to have the info on it at or near the fill cap.
Wick
 
......and that is NOT usable fuel that is total volume available......useble is a percentage of the total under ideal conditions...geofkaye
 
...bio's and veggies are all good ideas on a vehicle that is worth very little.....but I don't want to spend 10k for a new engine.....maybe in an old VW or something like that just to bang around town and of course there is the road tax issue with the fines starting at $10,000.........geofkaye
 
May I offer this site as possible sources of help and information. I spoke to Steve Spence the otherday and they are having great success with a Freightliner they recently converted to run on Veggie oil. http://www.green-trust.org/
 
......great!....but who covers the warranty then things don't go as planned.....a small M series engine is $12,000 now.....First thing Freightliner is going to say is "what warranty?''.....geofkaye
 
I talked with my mechanic about a week ago and he advised us that this is a good thing to do. He said to go ahead and dump veggie oil straight into the tank to mix with diesel. He said that it will actually be better for the engine especially with California Diesel, that it will gain power. He explained it this way. You used to be able to look into a diesel tank and only see black. Now you can look into a tank and damn near see to the bottom. They have taken all the heavy oils out of diesel to try and make it burn cleaner. The diesel engine needs the oil, keeps things cooler and runs more efficiently.

This guy has been working on these things over 30 years and really knows his stuff. I trust his judgement and will be trying this when we go on the road in April. Found a guy out here that is selling veggie oil for 1.50/gal.

Mike
 
I've been running my 95 GMC Suburban on Veggie Oil for over 50,000 miles. Works great.

I just purchased an 89 Navistar International 26-foot U-Haul box truck). The Greasecar conversion kit should arrive tomorrow. We plan on converting the truck to a toy hauler for camping and hauling our motorcycles.

I plan on keeping a photo journal on Webshots as the project advances.

Good Luck,

Jay
 
Ive worked on a Bio Deisel plant and put a little effort into finding the pro's and con's to this fuel, to my understanding, the filters and lines must be kept clean as the new fuel likes to accumulat or "produce" bacteria, since the fuel is not costantly circulated when shutdown, its not a good idea to let it set for some period of time? mixing the fuel might be the alteritive?, im no expert, another obstical is how it reacts to temprature change, the farmers I have talked with said they only used it in the warmer months up here in the midwest , the other down fall is , the exhaust makes you hungry! , you have a nonstop craveing for "french fries" , Opps, I mean "Freedom fries" is it ok to say that yet ? sorry, here we go again !
 
Veggie oil really isn't much of a problem and it's seriously easier to to the biodiesel. Bacteria is not something you hear about much at all and then it's usually from someone who is a detractor of veggie oil. If you do a good veggie oil conversion, MidWest winters aren't going to bother you, I'm in Oregon, it doesn't mean a thing if you are prepared. Go find some SVO forums like http://biodiesel.infopop.cc/6/ubb.x?a=cfrm&s=447609751
 
I run a two tank system. I start up on diesel and stop on diesel. My vegoil is heated with radiator coolant coils in the tank. After two years I have had no problems with bacteria, mold, algae, etc.

The clear concerns are dewatering your oil and filtration. IF... you run a dry oil and filter to better than your on-board vegoil filter you shouldn't have a major problem.

The engine injectors on my Suburban are set to 20 microns, I use an on-board filter to 10 microns and I filter into the truck to 5 microns. Under optimal conditions the filters last a long time.

However, nothing in life seems to be optimal for me. I was burning filters at around 1200 miles for almost a year, then it got WORSE! seems like every two or three days I was changing the filter. Found out my tank vent was clogged. The filters were fine, I was vapor locking my tank. DUH! Since then I'm around 2500 miles on this filter and going strong.

There are several options in regards to problems like bacteria and algae. Some of the biodiesel/vegoil groups can help you decide on the best biocide to add to your tank to prevent growth. Adding biodiesel to your diesel tank also helps keep the lines clean and biological free. (NOTE: If adding biodiesel to an old system, prepare to check your diesel fuel filter after a week or so. Biodiesel will clean all the algae, bacteria and gunk out of your tank, lines and pumps and send it straight to your filter and can shut you down fast. After a filter or two it will keep your fuel systen clean.

A word to the wise, biodiesel is a great solvent. If you spill it on your prize paint job, wash with degreaser and rinse well with water, CUZ IT'L EAT THE PAINT OFF YOUR VEHICLE!

Next project is to convert the 7.3 L, 26-foot box U-Haul I just bought. Got the second tank and conversion kit from Greasecar.com yesterday.

Grease is the word!

Jay
 
I run a three tank system, on my HDT and a two tank on my 97 CC/PSD/F350 dually.

I've run WVO for near 9 years and have had "0"
problems. LOVE it.

The third tank on the HDT is the holding tank and is located under the deck between the frames and from there I run it into my regular tanks.

I never run a mixture of less than 20% diesel to WVO, and at times in colder climates, its up to 100% diesel(alaska) but other wise its somewhere inbetween depending on availability and time to collect.

Ole Rudolph,Henry Ford and others tried to put us on an independence track at the turn of the last century,but cheap fossil fuel won over the public... cheaper, ain't necessarily better, as we are now lamenting.. as we try to move back to what the wiser old guys tried to tell us way back then..

As for the road tax...if you worry about big brother, then nothing will change.. except for the number of zero's in big brothers account balances and the lack of freedom for the common man.

Just My Humble opinion, Happy Travels
 
You guys running wvo or thinking about might want to investigate the use of a centrifuge to filter and dewater your oil; no messy straining and filtering and when done correctly you'll find your onboard fuel filters stay clean for a ridiculously long time as a centrifuge will filter smaller then any fuel filter, down to .5 microns, could ever catch.

I won't attempt to explain it all here but it you take a look at
http://biodiesel.infopop.cc/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/159605551/m/2001011761
or
http://biodiesel.infopop.cc/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/159605551/m/7911094591
you'll find plenty of information on the subject.
 
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