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Old 24-02-2005, 11:52   #1
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drain oil

I read a while back that it is a common practice for big trucks to put drain oil in the fuel tank and burn it through the engine. That got me thinking that while cruising where do you dispose of drain oil? Would it be safe for a boat engine to run with drain oil in the fuel? Or would you be asking for trouble? And if so it brings me back to what do you do with drain oil while cruising?
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Old 24-02-2005, 18:04   #2
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Your joking, right?

Adding oil to the fuel would cause so much smoke let alone carbon up the engine.

As for what to do with the waste oil. Schedule your oil changes while in port.
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Old 24-02-2005, 18:24   #3
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Hell NOOOOooooooo!!!!!!!!!! You are talking about iused sump oil right?? Don't put it anywhere near your fuel. Truckies, well any in their right mind would never neverNEVER, do this. It is full of carbon particles, metal particles, Gum, detergent, Acid and other goodies that would just love to get their teeth into destroying your fuel pump and injectors. Plus the smoke from the exhaust, oh the smoke, Oh the humanity, oh the.... ummOK, just don't OK.
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Old 24-02-2005, 19:11   #4
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No I am not joking. The 18 wheelers in some of the fleets in my area that are maintained by a place like Ryder run with drain oil in the fuel. With tractors running about $100000. I thought that they would be carefull what they put in them. If drain oil would hurt the engine I would not think they would add it. It is true that the trucks do smoke more. So I thought that 6 quarts of drain oil added to one of my 130 gallon tanks may be a safe way to dispose of used oil, making my boat more self sufficent. So that is why I'm asking for imput before I do something stupid.
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Old 24-02-2005, 20:49   #5
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Mate I am quite flabergasted. Drain oil in a Rig with motors like those. Not to mention, it is only desposing of something toxic and dangerouse to our envirnoment, in a way that is less traceable. Quite irisponsable to me.
So do I understand that you guy's don't have waste oil facilities?

To the initial question though, what to do with the waste or Drain oil. Why do an oil change at sea anyway? Your oil change schedule should be approx 100hrs. That,s a fair amount of engine running. It doesn't have to be 100hrs right on the dot. The engine will easily withstand 10 or 20hrs over, so if it means running a little longer to get to port, then you are safe.
If you use a good quality oil, then you "can" easily get much longer change intervals, BUT, the main reason for the oil change, is that diesel engines a very dirty when they burn. A tremendouse amount of carbon is produced. Some of this carbon gets washed down the bore past the rings and into the oil. That is why the waste oil gets so black. The biggest difference with lubricating oils for deisels against petrol, is they have a special detergent to help wash that oil from the engine parts and allows the engine oil filter to filter out those particles. It is this contamination of carbon that is the main reason why a regular 100hr change should be carried out. Another rule of thumb for engines not doing big hrs, is to change the oil every 6 months. This is due to the fact that acids are also produced during combustion. The most common being sulfuric acid, and it is not good for an engine to sit bathed in Sulfuric acid, so a regular change keeps that level down.
As an aside, the big truck rigs running big hrs, use a top oil, sometimes synthetic and have a special oil filtration device. It works by spinning the oil at a very high speed, and the carbon particles are forced out of the oil and collected before the oil continues onto the filter. Some of those trucks will do very high miles before a change. But even with a synthetic, eventuraly, the build up of other harmful contaminats like acid, can not easily beromoved by a filter. Now maybe and just maybe, it is that oil, which is reasonably clean, could be added to the fuel, but????
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Old 25-02-2005, 04:05   #6
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In my areathere are not all that many places to dispose of used oil. Some of the car oil change places burn it. Im the winter the heat is used for the building. If that is the case with cars then it must be mure difficult for a boat and in a strange place at that. I have seen jugs in dumpsters filled with used oil heading for the land fill. I guess that this country does not like people to to do it thier selves.
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Old 25-02-2005, 05:35   #7
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Used Oil Disposal

USED OIL DISPOSAL:

According to the American Petroleum Institute, 60% of all Do-It-Yourself oil changers improperly dispose of used motor oil. This results in millions of gallons of used motor oil, that can potentially pollute our water nationwide each year. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency believes that the largest single source of oil pollution tainting our nation's waters come from do-it-yourselfers.

Used motor oil can either be reprocessed and used again as motor oil, or more commonly, can be fuel-blended and burned for energy. Two gallons of recycled motor oil can generate enough electricity to run the average household for about a day, cook 48 meals in the microwave oven, or vacuum your house for 15 months!

The solution is easy – don’t discard used motor oil- Recycle it!

Note: There are over 100 facilities in Miami-Dade County that accept and recycle used motor oil. http://www.miamidade.gov/derm/Tips/l..._recycling.pdf

Check with your local or state authorities, or ‘EARTH 911' @ http://www.earth911.org/master.asp

Find a recycling site near you: http://www.earth911.org/master.asp?s...=1&serviceid=1

Unfortunately, I don’t have any simple solutions to waste oil disposal for offshore cruisers. In the Bahamas, I’ve (reluctantly) used the local “dump” - but I don’t feel good about it.

Gord
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Old 25-02-2005, 06:10   #8
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Thank you Gord. You have made my point. If it is safe to burn used oil through a engine, would'nt that be recycling and a better way of disposal than a land fill?
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Old 25-02-2005, 07:55   #9
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NO - it's not safe nor practical in our applications.

You may be thinking of something like the Cummins Centinel Advanced Oil Management System, which is an embedded system that extends oil change intervals on electronically-controlled diesel engines, by periodically removing a small amount of used oil from the engine's crankcase and replacing it with fresh oil. The used oil is sent to the engine's fuel tank, where it is blended with the fuel and burned during normal combustion. With CENTINEL, engine oil quality is stabilized by minimizing contaminant buildup and through continuous replenishment of oil additives: including dispersants, antifoaming agents, and other necessary ingredients.
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Old 25-02-2005, 08:48   #10
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Used oil.

Burning the used oil or disposing it in a landfill are not good practices in my opinion. That others do it is not good enough for me. Changing the oil at sea is also not a good idea in my opinion. There are pumps available for sucking the old oil out and used oil or milk containers for discarding the old oil. Use them to take the old oil to the recycle place listed in the guide provided by the local council. The local marina or service station should know what to do with it as they must be changing oil themselves. If they pore it in the ground then the place is not worth visiting.
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Old 25-02-2005, 10:54   #11
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I just don't see myself walking around a strange town looking for a place to dispose of oil. I do not plan to change oil while at sea but I will need to do normal maintance and as you can see by this post drain oil can be a problem.
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Old 25-02-2005, 10:57   #12
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Gord I know that it is common for drain oil to be mixed with diesel fuel and fed to a truck. I am not saying that is the right thing to do but it is being done.
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Old 25-02-2005, 13:13   #13
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Quote:
irwinsailor once whispered in the wind:
Gord I know that it is common for drain oil to be mixed with diesel fuel and fed to a truck. I am not saying that is the right thing to do but it is being done.
Done right, it costs an average of about $8,000 per engine, according to the USCG.
I don't think it's a practical solution (for most of us).
If not done right - it's unsafe!
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Old 25-02-2005, 13:23   #14
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I do want to be clear, I am not suporting this practice I'm just throwing out a idea. Gord what makes it "unsafe"? And why would it hurt a engine? There must be a place to find the anwser.
I know that it does not sound like a good idea on the surface but what if it is and we have not explored it?
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Old 26-02-2005, 20:34   #15
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Just as an aside, re-processed oil is in fact better than new oil. A couple of problems with oil, can not be efficiently taken care of in the cracking process. But when it has been through an engine, that process is done. So re-refined oil becomes a much more stable product. I just don't understand why in todays economy and difficulty to obtain oil, that oil companies aren't doing more to re-refine oil.

Burning old oil is not good. That's if you mean to just burn it in a can. But oil being run through an oil burning furnace is quite OK. But burning used requires special injector nozzels for the furnace and really good filters.
I have seen a guy that made a workshop heater out of an old pot belly woodburning heater and dripped waste oil from the holding tank, down into a burning pot in the pot belly. It was realy hot and had no smoke and they heated the workshop for free, from the used oil from the truck fleet they had.

The unsafe part is exactly what I stated in my first reply. The waste oil is full of very abrasive crap. Firstly, metal contamination. Fine particles of metal. You won't see them in that black ink, but they are there. Secondly, Carbon. It's the carbon that makes the stuff look like black ink. Otherwise, the oil would be a slightly darker brown colour, but still look like oil. Deisels have huge amounts of carbon washed down into the sump. It does several things. Firstly, it is abrasive. But secondly, being carbon, it doesn't burn or melt. It has a very high tempertare handling ability. So it ends up on your cylinder walls as a "grinding paste", it coats itself all over the top of the piston and all round the valve stem and glows a nice red colour as it heats up. Now haveing something inside you cylinder glowing red hot is not good. It can change the firing time of your engine. Petrol engines it is called run on. Deisel's it is pre-ignition problems. The fuel must enter the combustion chamber and ignite at the right time, but what many people don't realise, it has to ignite in the right way. The fuel burn actually has an ignition and combustion patern. If the pattern is wrong, you get a shockwave which sounds like detonation. Thats bad for the engine as well.
There is more, but I won't go into it here. I think the above is enough. But I would like to add, if this helps a little, my current day job is teaching Mechanics and Engineering skills to young people. I am not a fully qualified Mechanic, but I do know enough of the technical knowledge in those area's to be able to teach it. So I hope this you some confidence in what many have said. It is bad to add waste oil to your fuel.
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