Broken gas boiler, want to switch to bio or WVO

[DannyW]

Hi:

We have two boilers running on natural gas (FHW), one of which is broken. We made it through last winter with a combination of sweaters, shivering and electric heat. What I'd like to do is replace the broken boiler with an oil burning one for which I might be able to use bio or even WVO if possible. I've read some on this site and others from people who have tried it, but it was from 2004--anyone have any new experiences to report?

We're also pursuing a few projects at our school and have a few grant proposals

submitted. I'm trying to find out how far I have to go to get B100. I know we

can make it, which would be a great educational project at some point, but I'm

interested in more reliable sources at the moment. We are looking into acquiring

a used diesel bus and running it on biodiesel or even WVO with a conversion kit.

And of course, we also have the afforementioned boiler that needs replacing anyway, so we wanted to look into replacing it with something that burns biofuel. Naturally, we have our usual budget of $0. Well, not quite, but it's always an issue. Thanks for your help. Peace, Danny

Sincerely,

Daniel P. Welch, Administrative Director

The Greenhouse School

www.greenhouseschool.org

Check out the interesting things we're doing at GHS!

[BoneHead]

This thread has plans for a home furnace that runs on used motor oil and can double for WVO use. Maybe you can take the one you have and modify it with the burner which is supposed to burn clean.

http://www.fieldlines.com/story/2005/9/15/1147/26245

There's a lot of stuff about biodiesel on journeytoforever.org including several methods for biodiesel production from WVO or straight VO. They even claim that there are some diesel engines that will run on VO alone. You'll have to shuffle through the links there.

Good luck.

[mikey ny]

hello,

      As far as the bus goes, you should visit "thedieslstop.com, that is the ultimite forum for bio-diesl vehicles.(of course that is my oppinion anyway). For heating, if your budget is limited, you may consider a multifuel boiler. There are many boilers out there that have an oil burner at one end and a wood or coal burner on the other end. You could substitute the oil burner for a gas burner if you wanted to, but since you are on a low budget you may try to run wvo or used motor oil on the oil burner side. From my experiance, the waste motor oil units produce a long flame and require a deep firebox to accomodate it. Most of your average multifuel units are designed specifically for #2 oil and are quite compact. If I have time this fall or winter I may try to modify my oil burner with a longer delivery tube or even extend the combustion chamber of my multifuel boiler to accomodate a homebuilt wvo or wmo burner. I am sure it can be done with little creative effort, however if this is for a school you may have some liability concerns so be carefull. Just remember, if it was easy everyone would be doing it. This forum is a great source of information, be it experimental or tried and true, keep on researching, it is a learning thing, school or no school, it's all about learning.

                                         Mike

[Vince]

The October/November 2003 'Home Power' magazine (Issue 97) has an article about a guy running biodiesel in his residential oil furnace (pages 40-44).

Also check out this 'Alternative Fuels Furnace' forum:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/altfuelfurnace/