drain oil

[delmarrey]

Alan,

Here in the City's fleet they tank up most of the used oil and ship it off. It gets processed and turned into fuel oil for home furnaces. But up at the Fire garage, where they work on the fire trucks, they do burn the waste oil to heat the shop. It's filtered and injected into the heater.

The place has 10 big doors on both sides of the shop so they can drive straight thru, so there is a lot of wasted heat. And that old oil it put to good use.

And ditto on your last post. Too much carbon build up can shorten the life span of any engine.

[Alan Wheeler]

I was having a very good conversation with a good freind the other day, we were trying to understand why so much of what we consume is not recycled. Like how come it is cheaper (seemingly) to make oil from crude, when you would think re-refining a product most of the hardwork is already done on, would be cheaper. I just don't get why some recycled stuff can be more expensive, or uneconomical to recycle. Or why we can't find uses for many other products we discard. Car tyres was another one. What a problem we have with trying to dump those things.

[delmarrey]

It all has to do with the community. Some just need to be educated, others need to be forced. High volume users here in the US are monitored. Low volume users like the public are the biggest problem. There are so many of them and they can't be monitored.

Return fees are the only way it the general public can be forced to comply, like beverage containers and batteries. I'm surprised they don't charge a recycling fee on motor oil and getting credit when one returns used oil.

One problem with recycling is some of the waste oil products are contaminated with chlorines, solvents and synthetic oils. In processing waste oil, first it goes thru a filter to get out the slug and water. Then fluxes are added to separate other contaminates. And depending on what its next use is determines what the next processes will be. Some has to be heated just like the crude oil and stabilized into the next stage. Whatever the case it is a costly process just like crude oil. Crude is actually cheaper to process because they know what is in a very large volume. Not so with recycled oil.

One of my jobs is doing a quarterly walk-around of the City properties trying to locate contamination or hazardous waste. And most of what I find is milk jugs of oil someone has dropped off because they are too lazy to take it to a local recycling depot. And they know we'll take care of it. Between our four major garages we probably recycle 1000 gallons of motor and hydraulic oil per month.

If one could control what goes into motor waste oil, it could be filtered, chemicals can be added to specify its purpose and balance. Then put back into the market. One county that I know of, the one I live in, does just that.

As for tires, there is a business here that buys the used tires from tire shops and cuts them up to make bumpers (like on tug boats) and wear pads (like on backhoe outriggers). It's actually a pretty good business. These guys are making some real good money. "One mans garbage is another mans gold". I've thought of taking the idea to other parts of the world, maybe NZ? It sounds like you need it!

[BC Mike]

We have curbside pickup every second week for the recycling. The big stuff goes to the dump or other areas in town. At the dump it is one big recycling unit with seperate areas for tyres, tyres on rims, metal, wood, tree trimmings, batteries, appliances, propane bottles etc. What is left over is garbage.
Michael

[irwinsailor]

I did a google search and found a couple of places that talk about running drain oil through a engine. So there is information out there but I have not found anything that is conclusive.

[GordMay]

Gunnar:
As I said, (regarding the burning of lube’ oil in diesel engines), back on Friday, “...You may be thinking of something like the Cummins Centinel Advanced Oil Management System ...” which is well documented on the web.
ie:
http://www.embedded.com/story/OEG20010618S0078 (And many more)
and from the USCG Research & Development Center:
http://www.rdc.uscg.gov/Reports/2001/CGD0801Report.pdf (Page 26)
Seek, and you shall find ...
Gord

[BC Mike]

When we arrive at a destination there are likely a few things we need. Food, water, washing facilities, garbage disposal, new oil and filter for the engine, batteries for the small stuff. During these trips for supplies I think it should be easy to find a place to dispose of the old engine oil and filter. Problem solved. What have cruisers been doing all these years?
Michael

[Alan Wheeler]

Well certainly here in NZ, any service station where you can buy oil, has a facility to despose of the old stuff.
My marina also has a facility to despose of old oil, and I would imagine most decent marina complex's will have the same. So there are no issues here.

[irwinsailor]

I have a home here and I do know where to dispose of oil however it is getting harder to find olaces that will take it. Gord's link has so mother places to get rid of the stuff and most are 10 to 15 miles from the boat. If this were a strange port and I had no idea of where to go what do you do? I guess that I will just keep it with me for as long as it takes. There must be a better way.

[Jon D]

Only option I have ever heard of [note: not using, have no experience nor should this be considered an endorsement] that addresses the question you're asking is Gulf Coast Filters

http://www.gulfcoastfilters.com/index.htm

Some folks really swear by what they do others don't.

Have fun researching and determining if this is the right answer.

[Jentine]

Gunner, it is your engine and your cost to replace it. If you want to put used lube oil into your diesel tank, do so. I wouldn't for many reasons, the most common being that the acids that are in the oil will ruin the pump and injectors.
The fuel system mating components are measured in millionths of an inch. It takes very little contamination to destroy the perfect mate of the parts. Fuel filters, in the final stage of filtration, should filter out contamination larger than one micron, so at that rate of filtration, all metal particulate, carbon deposits and the like would be removed, but other, smaller suspended abrasives would not be removed by the filters, nor would the acids.
The best place to dispose of used engine oil is at the place that sells it. I have never had difficulty disposing of used engine oil. It is normally the case that marinas and boat yards remove considerable amounts of oil from engines and they have a method of disposal. It may be the case that they will charge a fee for disposal, but it will be legal and environmentally friendly.

Jim

[irwinsailor]

Don't get me wrong here my engine cost over $16000. and it has 250 hours on it. I will not knowingly do anything that could damage it. Soon I will have a new genset and it will need service. And I guess that I will be carring drain oil until I find a place to dump it.

[Alan Wheeler]

Or how about we change the concept of the argument here completely. Why not look at an add on filtering system. Run a very good quality oil, such as a semi or full synthetic. Have a seperate filtration system that both you gen and main engines run their oils through. The are many concepts out there. Donaldson should be a good place to start. They are a USA company. On really big engines, like ship types, they actually have a centrifugal type system that spins all the crude out. The oil coming out the end of it looks brand new. They have to do it this way, cause they are talking enormouse quantities of oil. But on a smaller scale, those big truck rigs have a similar system, but on a smaller scale. I used to sell them about 16 years ago.

[Rick]

Before I first "dropped out" and went cruising in '80 I had an illuminating discussion with a mechanical engineer who specialized in lubricants specifically for engines, transmissions, etc. He convinced me to switch to parasynthetic engine oil for cruising. One convincing factor is that you can run three times longer with parasynthetic oils and, therefore, carry less on board for changes.

He pointed out that the MAIN factor regarding oil in the engine is film strength. Film strength is directly related to the length of the oil molecules and that after long periods of operation the long chain molecules begin to break down into shorter ones. When the film strength is sufficiently low molecules begin to pass by the rings and you begin to burn oil. He told me that if you need to "push" the oil change time merely keep a close watch on the oil level and the day that it drops chang it! You don't want to add to the oil because the ratio of long chain molecules to short ones gets smaller and smaller. Of course the additives which prevent corrosion and water dispersment drop as well...another reason not to merely keep adding.

Sure enough, my Yanmar would operate about 110 to 120 hours before the oil level slightly dropped and I would change it (if not at the usual 100 hours). After using the synthetic I could run well beyod 300 hours without the level dropping although I avoided doing so without good reason.

So, I doubt that without a highly technically developed process that re-formed used engine oil would possibly be economically competitive with new synthetic oil in performance. I also agree that without a complex process that recycled engine oil would have sufficient amounts of acids, water, etc. removed so that I would trust mixing it with diesel for increased run times.

comments?
Regards,
Rick

[Alan Wheeler]

Your source was close to spot on.
Firstly, ALL mineral oils, no matter what grade and quality, come from a base mineral oil. So buying a top qaulity oil doesn't mean the oil is better refined or came from a high quality crude or that one company has a "majic formulae" for creating oil that is better than the opposition down the road. In fact here in NZ, all the oil comes out of the same buld supply. It is then retailed as BP, Shell, Caltex, Mobil and so on.
But this is where the difference comes in. All Base oils have additives thrown into the blend. The additives are all Synthetic and do varying jobs. Such as stabilizers, EP conditioners(elasto-polymers)(thats the film strength part Rick), Detergent etc. Detergent, which is mostly in deisel oils, doesn't "wash" the oil or engine as such. It is an additive that reduces the surface tension of the oil. This enables such particles as carbon, to "wet out" and become encapsulated by the oil film. Otherwise, it would just float on top and not mix in. The higher the qaulity (most commonly determined by price, not name) is usually because more specific additives are placed in the mix. This brings the oil upto specific ratings determined by the SAE (society of automotive engineers) and some other characters out there, that specify a particular oil grading and quality for their engines. So in a ruff term, ALL oils are semi-synthetic. But the ability to maintane that EP strength over it's operating life is where the quantities and types of synthetics added vary. So an expensive high additive oil and a pure synthetic oil, has a much longer service life, because the EP strength doesn't break down. Infact, the limiting factors of these oils, is purely the cleanlyness. If you can keep the crud out, they last indefinately. Hence my ealier comment about good oil, good filtration and you can last many more hours between service.
I have never studied what the difference between petrol and deisel is in relation to Sulfuric acid produced. With a petrol engine, for every 10 ltrs of fuel burn't, ruffly 1 ltr of water is produce and 1/10th of a ltr of sulfuric acid is produced. Deisel will vary as some countries have high sulfer contents and some have no sulfer contents in the diesel fuels. Here in NZ, we are in a process of reducing Sulfer content, with a goal of no Sulfer by 2007.