Biodiesel for furnace?

[Ed from Vashon]

I heat my shop with an old 40's vintage Siegler oil furnace. Currently I burn kerosene because the furnace was designed for #1 heating oil. I have been told that anything heavier will not flow properly. Is biodiesel thin enough for this use or is there some way to reduce its viscosity? Kero's really pricey stuff these days.

 

[1040 WreckerMan]

Biodiesel will typically have a viscosity close to #2, so it'd be a bit thick for your application. I have some portable kerosene heaters I use in a uninsulated shop. I mix B99 and kero, about 75/25 and haven't had any problems so far even in single digit temps. 50-75% biodiesel will help your heating costs quite a bit I would think.

The best price I have found on kerosene around your area is a small refinery in the Port of Tacoma. It's on Thorne ST (I think it's Thorne) across the street from Penske truck.

 

[Ed from Vashon]

1040 Wreckerman, thanks very much for the suggestion, especially on the kero source. That will be a huge help! On your portable kero heaters, are they the wick type like a Kerosun?

 

[1040 WreckerMan]

Yep, Kerosun (I think that Kerosun was a brand change and they are really made by a Japanese company?). I a couple of them and they get quite a few hours on them in the winter months and are quite abused. I rarely burn 'em dry and rake the wicks, etc. Even so, they burn quite clean with the biodiesel in them, and I think I'm actually a bit higher than 75% at this point.

 

[Schultz]

I've been using ultra low sulfur B20 to B50 in my fuel oil boiler for a couple years now. I've found that if I did a few things I actually was able to tune the boiler to run better than it was originally with #2. I'm sure if I switch back to #2 it will run just as well except #2 is very dirty by comparison.

What I really like besides using renewable fuel is that I don't need to clean all the stinky sulfur and other stuff out of the boiler and stack every year. There just isn't anything but a little carbon to clean. I opened it up this year to clean, and just buttoned it back up. There wasn't anything to clean.

My tank is outside in MI where it does go below 0 so this stuff does get thicker than standard #2. The supplier blends it with #1 during January and February to keep it from gelling.

I found when I first starting using the b20 my boiler seemed louder, more rumble to the noise.
So then I read up on nozzles, I found the nozzle the heating & cooling company put in was probably 20-30% oversized for what I needed and the wrong type. I went from 1gph to .65gph.
To do this I needed to adjust the airflow so that I wasn't blowing the flame out.
I also increased the pressure of the pump from 100 psi to 120psi. This reduced the rumble and made the boiler a lot quieter. What this did is atomize the fuel better, finer fuel droplets = quieter combustion.
I also added 5' of coiled copper tubing between the pump and the nozzle. This helps bring the fuel from outside temp to almost inside temp by the time it reaches the nozzle. This helped further reduce the rumble, again finer fuel droplets = quieter combustion.

Now I can't hear the boiler in the bedrooms as I use to, and my wife doesn’t refer to the Mack truck in the basement while we're watching TV anymore.

When I tried B50 in the spring last year I had to move up a nozzle size and adjust the air mix just to get it to run. Otherwise it would blow the flame out. I just run B20 now and don't worry about it anymore.