Waste Vegetable Oil

Dropped both of my first oil samples in the mail about a week ago.  Received an email with my first two Used Oil Analysis (UOA) results from Blackstone Labs (http://blackstone-labs.com/).  The first UOA reflects 3400 miles on diesel #2 only and was very positive.  The second UOA reflects 5200 miles on diesel #2 and an occasional switch to a 50/50 mix of diesel #2 and WVO (canola) and was also very positive.  The wear on my F-250 7.3L PSD seems to be below average and the TBN values on my oil seem to be holding up very well.  The labs suggested stretching to 7500 miles, but I changed my oil immediately after the 5400 mile sample.

After my last sample and oil change, I continued to gradually increase % WVO in my heated tanks. 50/50, then 40/60, then 25/75, now 10/90.  Very unlikely that I will be able to extend usage much past 3000 miles now that I’m running on 10/90 mix of diesel #2 and WVO (canola).  Now that I am using a high % WVO in my heated tanks, I plan to send samples again at 3400 miles and 5200 miles so we can compare apples to apples.

Also, I picked up a nice compact 5400rpm bench centrifuge with 15mL tubes from Patricia on Craig’s List for $35 tonight.  Hoping to use it to check oil samples for water and particles.  She was very interested when I told her how I planned to use the centrifuge and she thought it would work perfectly.  She had previously used the centrifuge to test waste water samples while providing consulting to treatment plants.  She asked about the possibility of consuming waste fuel from the grease traps at restaurants.  I explained that I was simply using fryer oil.  Interestingly enough, I just read about the concept of extracting fuel from grease traps at Black Gold Bio Fuels website (http://www.blackgoldbiofuels.com/) in the past few days.  Clean grease traps, deliver to processing site, extract fuel (usually 3% of volume), send other 97% to waste-water treatment plant.  Good conversation.