Chris D asked: I just got a new fuel-oil furnace and was looking into making my own biodiesel, but wanted to check if it could safely be used in my home heating furnace as well, before making a decission. We live in Wisconsin, and are concerned about the risk of the biodiesel gelling up, anyone know anything about this?
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first off….diesel is the bottom of the gas/oils line. Gas is top, then kerosene, stove oil, etc. then diesel is the least refined. Probably if you put in additive, bio-diesel might work. Diesel engines run on compression…(no spark) The others (including your furnace ) use spark to ignite the fuel at the burner. Bio might bung up your flow nozzle in your furnace. Check with a burner serviceman. Also, if you’re gonna make your own, keep it where it won’t gel up
Energy wise, you would probably be better off running the vegetable oil in your boiler/furnace. This would actually require some extra modifications though, which you might not be able to make. If you wanter to mix the veg with regular fuel oil, you could do it without modifications with a 20/80 veg/oil mixtures.
You can probably use biodiesel in place of #2 heating oil, but biodiesel will gel just like normal #2 diesel. The reason the #2 heating oil (and diesel for that matter) doesn’t gel is because it has been treated with some additives to prevent gelling. Again, the gelling problem can be avoided by using a 20/80 bio/oil mixture.
Gelling is caused when the longer hydrocarbons start freezing out, so you could also do a low-temperature filtering of your biodiesel. You might also try adding some off-the-shelf additives normally used to prevent diesel gelling. But these might not be good for your furnace (or you).
You could also try a tank modification. Most tanks are either in the cellar, or buried in the ground, but since you’re worried about gelling, I’m guessing yours is buried shallow, or above ground. You could add insulation around the tank, and then install an electric thermostat and electric heater. You should be able to keep the tank above the cloud point. Even easier if you use a bio/petrol mixture to lower the cloud point.
Biodiesel is notorious for gelling up,but with additive,it should work.There are websites that sell skids to make our own biodiesel.