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Does anyone use black diesel?

Icesythe7

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Indiana, USA
Curious if anyone has tried black diesel(90% used motor oil, 10% gasoline) in their gensets? I have an unlimited supply of used motor oil from work and could easily make 1500 gallons now just curious if cleaned and filtered correctly I don't see any issues?
 

Farmitall

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Eubank, KY
Reasons why I don't.

I don't have a sufficient source of used motor oil.
I don't have a still to distill it.
I don't have the time to dedicate to making it in any quantity even if I had the stuff to do it.
Not cost effective YET. Farm diesel and road diesel are still available and still reasonably priced for as much as I use in my tractor and gen sets.

I couldn't even see me doing it under grid down, SHTF conditions, as everyone would be hoarding petroleum products for their own use like heating. You can do without lights and other appliances.....but you have to stay warm to survive.

If push really came to shove, I think I'd find some way of building a steam powered (wood fired) generator.
 

Scoobyshep

Well-known member
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Location
Florida
In my opinion, some oil in fuel is better for the older sets anyway as newer diesel is less lubricative than the current fuel. I considered doing it with my 004, the only reason I didn't is lack of time.

Sent from my SM-S908U using Tapatalk
 

WWRD99

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Location
York Pa
I have 275 gallons of filtered cooking oil I have set up to turn into fuel if I ever need it. I have access to all the used oil I want at this time just haven't run down that hole yet since it's easier to do cooking oil than used engine oil. Plus it's cleaner to deal with.
 

TheDrashStash

Active member
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Location
Monroe, GA
I mainly plan to use the black diesel for a diesel heater for the garage, but figured if I have enough and it wouldn't mess anything up I could use it for the gensets as well.
I have a centrifuge to process my WMO and it does a great job pulling all the crud out. I would not put uncleaned oil in anything, having found that out after clogging the tip in my hunter camfire heater and flooded it with oil.

For a heater you can run 100% WMO, no gas is needed. For engines, I just add oil to my diesel at 20% and everything runs fine on it
 

87cr250r

Well-known member
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Location
Rodeo, Ca
Do be aware that because you have added gasoline to your fuel you need to treat it as such.

Used motor oil is fine to feed into a diesel engine provided it is filtered, dry, and diluted enough to have the correct viscosity.

Vegetable oils are more challenging. They have alkanes in them which form varnish and can gum things up. Remember to season your cast iron cookware with vegetable oil and not animal oil because it has the alkanes that become the alkyds that coat your pan.
 

dav5

Active member
396
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Location
Mono, Ontario
Do be aware that because you have added gasoline to your fuel you need to treat it as such.

Used motor oil is fine to feed into a diesel engine provided it is filtered, dry, and diluted enough to have the correct viscosity.

Vegetable oils are more challenging. They have alkanes in them which form varnish and can gum things up. Remember to season your cast iron cookware with vegetable oil and not animal oil because it has the alkanes that become the alkyds that coat your pan.
A local mechanic tried to weld near what he thought was a tank of 100% diesel. It was a diesel gas mix and he blew himself and the garage up.
 

Rosemary Ranch

New member
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Location
Port Republic, MD
Curious if anyone has tried black diesel(90% used motor oil, 10% gasoline) in their gensets? I have an unlimited supply of used motor oil from work and could easily make 1500 gallons now just curious if cleaned and filtered correctly I don't see any issues?
I use a mixture of centrifuged WMO and red diesel (60% WMO, 40% Diesel) in my MEP-002A and 003A. I've tried it in the MEP - 803A but it sure wasn't happy.. The 002 & 003 both purr like kittens on the mixture.
 

Ray70

Well-known member
2,595
5,914
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Location
West greenwich/RI
I use a mixture of centrifuged WMO and red diesel (60% WMO, 40% Diesel) in my MEP-002A and 003A. I've tried it in the MEP - 803A but it sure wasn't happy.. The 002 & 003 both purr like kittens on the mixture.
By chance have you done any load testing with your 002 or 003?
My son decided to try making some black diesel today, 2 gl. WMO diluted with some gasoline we previously used to degrease some parts , to match the viscosity of HHO, and then filtered to 4 microns and mixed that 50/50 with HHO.
Put it in what I would consider my least valuable 002 ( just in case.... ) and ran it for an hour or so.
At first glance it seemed to start and run just fine. Slightly different smell to the exhaust for sure.
We loaded it up and I think we are either getting less power out of it, or perhaps the governor needs adjusting, but I'm pretty sure I had it adjusted to be able to handle 6500W with under 2Hz droop.
Running on the black diesel it seemed to start drooping excessively at just over 5000w.
Previously this machine would begin to smoke slightly as you approached max. output, but continue running within tolerance and would smoke a bit more once you pass 100% load and eventually it would begin to loose RPM if load increased any further.
On the Black diesel there was never any smoke at all, even when the governor lost it's ability to hold the RPM's within tolerance.
Even as the set drooped below 58Hz there was no smoke at all.
Looking at BTU ratings for the different components, HHO should be 138-140K, the WMO should be in the 145-160K range and gasoline about 117K, so given the relatively low percentage of gasoline added ( <20% ) I wouldn't think the final product would contain less energy than HHO alone, in fact it should be higher.
Before testing any further I'm going to switch back to treated HHO and retest to be sure the governor is still performing as expected, but was curious if anyone has any real performance data available from an MEP?
 
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