making black diesel

[Toolless]

Making black diesel from waste engine oil is fairly simple
it is a case of de watering it and mixing it with a thinner oil and filtering it
mix it to thick and it will be to thick for your injector pump to pump it through the injectors and you will have a loss of power
Dont filter it properly and you will clog up the filters on your car in no time
Dont want to bother filtering it and bypass your fuel filter then you will end up with all kinds of problems like clogged injectors and changing the torque sleave and torque piston

Dewatering

I let my 45 gallon drum of WMO settle for a month
This way the oil and water will split and the water will settle to the bottom of the drum
I then pump the water oil mix out of the drum into a smaller drum and let that settle for a month


Mixing

I mix my waste engine oil before filtering it
You need to thin it down to a point where its thin enough to run through your fuel system
The ratio of thickness you can get away with will depend on the type of engine you are running it on
If you build a cold twin tank system you can experiment with this (will start a new thread on this soon)
I run mine at 5/8 waste engine oil and 3/8 lighter oil
But if you dont know I would just run it 50/ 50
I dont think the common rail will work with this viscosity
But as a general rule the older the engine and the hotter the climate the thinner the thining fuel you are using the thicker you can run on it
If your engine is pre 2000 then it is probably the old direct injection and not the common rail and should run at this viscosity
BOSH injector pumps are said to be better at this then the Lucas

Types of thining fuels you can use must all be oil based and need to bond with oil like diesel, petrol, kerosene, light hydraulic oil, terps and paint thinners and miss fuels (which is basically waste petrol and diesel mix)
Petrol and thinners are the thinnest of the above which means you could get away with less

As you can see in the second diagram I have 1 x 205 liter drum of thick oil, my waste engine oil and 1 x 205 liter drum of thin oil and a 25 liter plastic transparent drum
the plastic drum has liter measurement on it
I use this as my mixing drum so I can see how much of each liquid I have put in
this is why it is transparent and has measurement makers on it
I use an oil barrel pump to pump the oil into my mixing drum that threads ontop of the drums
A 1/2" bore garden hose fits onto this
The oil is pumped into the mixer then I pour the mixing drum into my filter drum
The filter drum is gravity feed so drops out of the filters into the drum
I then pump this out of the drum through the 1/2" pipe into my fuel tank
As you can see in the diagram there is an online mesh filter
This is a final filter and is there as back up just to stop any muck getting in your tank
It is a 1/2" inline mesh filter used on the 12V diaphragm caravan water pumps and can be bought on ebay
inside it there is a mesh, I raped around the mesh a piece of J cloth
A J cloth is apromitly 10 microns so it dose help a little

Filtering

As a general rule you should always filter your oil to less of what the fuel filter is on your car
My fuel filter on my van is 2 microns so this is why I use a 1 micron bag

As you can see in the photo I use a 45 gallon oil drum
I cut the top off of the drum so I could clean it out
I drilled holes in the drum top part and bottom so I could tie it back together with wire/ string (but toggle clips would be better)
And with a 6" round hole cut out in the top of it, I then put my 6" wide filter bags inside
The lip of the bag sites on top of the drum
I use a 3 stage filtration process
Where I have a pillow case as a 75 micron bag, a 5 micron bag and a 1 micron bag
They all sit inside each other so it can all be filtered in one go
This is the type of filter bags I use
18" FILTER BAGS,3 x 1 MICRON ,BIO DIESEL ,VEG OIL, | eBay

The reason I use 3 filter bags is because if I put everything straight into the 1 micron bag it would clog very quickly

I pour my drum of mixed fuel through the filter bags and it drops to the bottom of the drum ready for use
I then pump that out through the oil pump through the inline filter straight into my van

[simone0414]

How do you know the oil is dewatered properly? Do you do a water test?

Is the filter bags nominal or absolute? Do you just let them hang or are they supported? If you just let them hang a 1 micron bag will get stretched from the weight of the oil in it & will not be a 1 micron filter for long.

How many miles have you logged running black diesel? Have you had any engine problems that could have been caused by this fuel? What % to you run WMO at?

[Toolless]

Originally Posted by simone0414

How do you know the oil is dewatered properly? Do you do a water test?

I just look at it and if it looks split then the solutions have not bonded

Originally Posted by simone0414

Is the filter bags nominal or absolute? Do you just let them hang or are they supported? If you just let them hang a 1 micron bag will get stretched from the weight of the oil in it & will not be a 1 micron filter for long.

The filter bags are the same as shown in the link above
I just let them hand
Did not know you where supposed to support them
What do you use to support yours

Originally Posted by simone0414

How many miles have you logged running black diesel? Have you had any engine problems that could have been caused by this fuel? What % to you run WMO at?

I dont know how many miles but many thosonds in 3 vans
Had lots of problems before filtering it like above in the last 2 vans
But now it is filtered to 1 micron no blockages at all
Still have a problem with smoke
The black carbon in the WMO builds up in the engine over time and becomes very smoky especily on start ups
tried water injection but was not that good

[Toolless]

Originally Posted by simone0414

Have you had any engine problems that could have been caused by this fuel?

Yes!
After a while of running on black diesel the exhaust smoke becomes very smoky indeed!
Grey white smoke, especially on cold start ups
The problem is due to a build up of carbon on the injector tips found from the black carbon, found in the WMO
The solution is to take the injectors out of your engine and clean all the black stubborn pitted carbon off with emery cloth or sand paper or scrape it off with a screw driver
My van was honking the other day but I took the injectors out and cleaned them and after that it was as clean as a bell
Some people replace the injectors but I see no need on spending that kind of money