Waste Vegetable Oil Fuels

NOTICE - 11/20/05: It has come to my attention that you can die, burn your house down, get hurt real bad, and other nefarious and awful things. I am also aware that some people blindly follow instructions without using common sense, and then sue. This post details a “hacked”, non-standard use, out of code, not mother approved, professional driver on a closed course, application. If you mess with this stuff and don’t understand it, bad things can happen. I will not be party to your death, maiming, etc., so if you can’t figure out that this whole process is dangerous. Please don’t read this or come back. Otherwise enjoy, be safe and happy brewing.

I had a request for a diagram and description of the way we decided to heat our wash tank. This was all Jim’s idea. Props to him. He’s been a great help and might actually benefit from all his efforts if he’d ever find an oil source.
Check out Jim and Steve (Steve sold his soul and his SD) with their biodiesel fueled Mercedes (Jim is on the left and still owns his SD.).

Our wash tank is a standpipe version copied from Graydon’s design that is based off of the one on the Biodiesel Community page. It was winter and we were in my garage. We needed to keep our biodiesel warm so it could be washed. We tried the aquarium heater. It broke, and once almost melted a hole in the barrel. I tried to figure out a wand made from a heating element, but Home Depot was just not talking to me. Finally Jim said why not just use a bung. The answer was obvious to me. Duh!, “We need both bungs.” Then he humbled me with this beautiful solution.

Using a “T” as and “L” but with a heater:

Our wash tank barrel has two 2″ bungs. One is a coarse thread, the other NPT. We are draining our water out of the NPT side. On that side we threaded in a 2″ close nipple. Onto that nipple, we put a 2″ T so the T was on its side. We then made the proper reductions opposite the nipple and threaded in a heating element. On the tail (down stroke, trunk, etc.) of the T that is now horizontal we also reduced way down to 3/4″ so that we could use the old nipple and valve. Viola. A heated wash tank that can still drain out of both bungs. Nothing to drop in, no wires hanging out of the tank, and no extra holes.