Torpedo heater on WVO

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I currently use a 100K BTU ReddyHeater to heat my garage. Kerosene is $3-4 a gallon around here, and I really don't want to run #2 diesel inside the garage as I'd have to vent it more and it wouldn't be much cheaper than kerosene. I've heard that a cheap way to run one of these heaters on WVO is to heat up filtered oil on a hotplate, and stick the intake hose into the pan. Has anyone had any experience with this? I know good filtration is essential, and I have access to about 50 gallons/week of WVO so if I can get this setup to work it would save me about $60/month.
 
I would check out the biodiesel.infopop.cc first. There is also a forum that does what you are saying, I think the name is something like biofuel for heating or something. Sorry, but the name escapes me.

It will take a good amount of work to get the WVO to runnable product. I don’t know about the setup on the heater, but you need to get the junk and the water out for vehicles. Heaters may be different, I don’t know.

Also, just found this in a link on infopop.

http://greasecar.com/forum_topicview.cfm?frmtopicID=324
 
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Did some reading since I don’t have any classes today. The important things that I found out are whether or not you have spark plug ignition or glow plug ignition. Also, it seems a lot of people are blending kerosene and WVO without many modifications, but when you try to run all WVO, you need to block flow of air in the back, heat the fuel with something, either a pot warmer, or some people have rigged the fuel hose to stick into the fire stream to preheat the fuel. I found the biodiesel/WVO/WMO for heating subforum on infopop and did some poking around.
Bio for heating

It looks like running 100% WVO will take some work. Read up and let me know what you decide.

Found the altfuels for home heating yahoo group

Altfuel
 
I burn off road diesel in mine all winter with no issues whatsoever. Contrary to belief its all ULSD now and off road fuel is $1.89 a gallon. It burns just as clean as K1 does in my opinion. My garage isn't well insulated but I don't have any ventilation or windows cracked either. YMMV.
 
Ive messed with different fuels in mine quite a bit. My experience with waste motor oil was a smokey garage. It burns but it smokes a bit. So that's not good. I would assume high levels of CO off of that.

Waste vegetable oil will work if you thin it with kerosene like mentioned. Works pretty good too.

Ive just been running on road diesel in mine. The dyed stuff stinks like crazy where as on road seems to burn just as clean as kerosene and here its significantly cheaper. Clear kerosene is 3.89 and diesel is 2.39
 
I use regular on road diesel in mine as well. It's cheaper than kero and to me it burns with less odor and cleaner once you up the air pressure a bit. I have 2 flags that hang in my shop...when I used kerosene they needed washed every year to make the white, white again. Now they stay clean.

I like the idea of WVO tho!
 
For any kind of waste oil I think you need to go whole hog furnace style.. anything that burns nasty used oil isnt going to be clean enough for me without some sort of vent.

And that is more of a shop thing than a garage heater.
 
Winterized on road diesel in mine, it's a small one, only 35K BTU-but the fuel cranked up until 1 inch flames come out the front of it! WVO would be a good idea if warmed first, it would smell like fries!
 
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