Has anyone ever made or used one of these? I've got an abundance of used oil I wouldn't mind putting to good use
There's a few videos out there, but this is kindof what I'm thinking of:

Or

Actually realistically I probably wouldn't be using a fan to make a blast furnace, I'd just do a simple burner pot like this one:

Except I'd probably weld some fins on the tank and put a little fan to blow air on the tank.

I like this guy's twist-lock design:

I have looked into the commercial ones because I too have tons of waste oil (currently three 5 gallon jugs). The commercial ones are fancy and clean burning, but CRAZY expensive. I honestly didn't think of building my own.

MinisterofDOOM wrote: ↑

Mon Dec 14, 2020 5:18 pm

The commercial ones are fancy and clean burning, but CRAZY expensive. I honestly didn't think of building my own.

Yup. Its quite off-putting. Their consumption seems higher, BTU output seems lower, and cost is astronomical.
I've begun procuring the components to do this... so a write-up may be coming soon.
Unfortunately I have a LOT of irons in the proverbial fire at the moment. The speed at which I do this project is probably going to be dependent on how effin cold it stays haha.

Just remember, waste engine oil has heavy metal contaminants so don't be down wind of exhaust pipe.

Now-a-days its mostly iron, steel, and aluminum. No large amounts of lead.
But yeah, the chimney is routing outside for sure.

And trace amounts of chrome from the rings , also whatever is used instead of Babbet metal on crank shaft bearings. Good luck with the project.

While I was stationed at FE Warren AFB the base CEs decided to convert thee central heating and standby power plant to burn waste engine oil from the Minuteman Transporter-erectors [16 cylinder tandem ganged V8 engines] to save on disposal rates and also substantial heating oil costs. The Bio-Environmental Engineering section [sewer sniffers] made the plant substantially dilute the waste engine oil with straight heating oil before approving the idea. Good basic idea however. We were building and manning 200 ICBM sites at the time. Lots of mileage on those engines.

One commercial station, on the most heavily transport route refused to give Government discount on fuel stops. So the drivers were instructed to demand trading stamps! Furnished many Barrack day rooms with TV sets and casual seating.

PapaSmurf2k3 wrote: ↑

Tue Dec 15, 2020 10:22 am

Now-a-days its mostly iron, steel, and aluminum. No large amounts of lead.
But yeah, the chimney is routing outside for sure.

Mine would be burning oil with zddp and other fun things for old motors.

Alright, so this is happening. I got a drum of used oil from some maintenance department. Its long since been forgotten, although it still had some old nasty oil in it. I drilled a hole in it and threw it in a fire pit to get it to outgas/burn, as well as burn off all the paint on the outside before I got going. There still seems like there's a tiny bit left in there, but oh well.
Here's a quick sketch of the plan. I left out the fact that I'll be adding some fins to the top of the barrel to better promote heat transfer. I'm also going to try to put 2 studs alongside the burn chamber pipe to go through the rotor and cinch everything up to the barrel. Here's starting the mock-up. I got a plasma cutter and fish-mouthed a stainless steel mixing pot I got from Big Lots for like 10 bucks. Also used the plasma cutter to get the center out of the rotor. Its just a little 110v hobart so this was a little beyond what its really supposed to do... but it did it! I also used the plasma cutter to cut the first hole in the drum tonight. It smelled TERRIBLE. 1 cut and I vacated the shop for the evening haha. .

I hope to have the thing installed and running by this weekend. I'll be doing a test burn outside with manual oil feed first.

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Damn cool. Glad I don't need heat here, but I'd be copying if I did!

I *hate* hauling 10x gallon jugs every couple months to O'Reilly's for recycling.

So tonight I did another burn on the barrel in the fire pit to get the remainder of the oil out of the inside now that I have a much larger hole in it. I then re-cleaned the outside and inside before cutting more. It still wasn't perfect, but MUCH better.
After that, I rolled it into the shop, tipped it over (where it of course leaked more water out from hosing it off), traced the outline of my stovepipe fitting for the chimney on it, straddled the barrel, and cut the hole out with the plasma cutter. I REALLY enjoy the plasma cutter for this type of fabrication. It makes life a lot easier.
After that, I brought all the components over for mock-up and height setting. I put the deep skillet (aka oil holder) on 4 2x6s for spacing, then the rotor, then the stainless pot/tube on. Aligned it as best I could via eye and put the barrel on top.
After that, I snagged an old 240sx SE wheel I had laying around and put it on my jack so I could dial in the height and angle. I wanted a little bit of a lift from front to back to promote exhaust flow. This made it easy to get it just right. From there I was able to weld some legs on. I JUST got a new welder yesterday (Lincoln multi-purpose mig/tig/stick), and this was a good opportunity to break it in a bit. ^Yes, I know I'm welding over cardboard. In my defense, it was wet in that area, and I wanted something to kneel on haha. I'll probably add some cross bars or additional supports in the future. I don't think its going anyway, but it just looks flimsy.
Once the legs were on, I took it outside for a manual burn. I put a couple "glugs" of oil into the cast iron skillet, tossed a crumpled up piece of cardboard in there, lit it up with my map gas torch and threw it on one of the 2x6s that was on my jack. I sandwiched the rotor and the stainless tube up to the barrel and cracked a beer while I waited for everything to heat up. I can look through the chimney hole and see the flames licking up.
It was warm, but it was also kinda slow. I figured I needed more air. I was hoping the massive vents in the vette rotor would have supplied enough, but it doesn't look like that's the case. I fired up my compressor and blew some air in through the vents to verify. The stainless tube got a dark-ish red. I still had a lot of oil left in the pan, so I used it for experimentation purposes.
I grabbed a few of the other 2x6s and propped them up under the rotor to hold everything up against the barrel. I then lowered the jack to open up a small gap between the oil skillet and rotor to allow more air in. What happened next was nothing short of gorgeous. The tube got bright red. The freaking barrel got cherry red and finally burned off whatever the hell was left inside (and outside). The rotor got hot. The pan got hot. Everything got hot and this thing started SLINGING heat. It started to smell like burning wood. I figured the 2x6s holding the rotor were getting a little toasty. They promptly ignited, followed by the one between the jack and the oil skillet.
I went to re-raise the jack to snuff the heat down a bit but it was kinda too late... the jack was getting pretty damn hot so I had to shut it down. I lowered it down and the assembly fell apart in a pseudo-controlled manner. There was barely any oil left in the pan and none of it went flying.
All in all, I'd say it was very successful. I want to rig up a throttle/port to tune the air/fuel ratio once I add the gravity feed oil system.
Tomorrow, I'm not opposed to cutting a hole in the rotor for oil supply, cutting a hole in the side of the building for exhaust, fabricating the chimney, and testing it inside.
I still need to purchase fittings to supply oil from the bucket to the burn chamber.

This is badass!
My beer fridge has died, which means I will likely free up a few square feet of garage floorspace. Maybe I can build something more vertically-oriented and vent exhaust just below the eaves on the exterior side of the garage.

Yeah this burner is really quite large, although I imagine when you downsize the chamber (or go more vertical), you lose some efficiency. If your garage is insulated it wont matter much though. The amount of BTUs these things kick out is just impressive.
I've found since starting this endeavor that there's a lot of people offering up their used oil too, so unless you're in the shop every day, you probably wont be running out anytime soon.

Last night a solid fabricator/wrencher came by and helped out with a ton of the work left to do. Good thing too, because a lot of it required this rig get flipped back and forth, and that's a 2-person job if you don't want to break anything.
Speaking of flipping, my car dollies had a *perfect* V-block style design that was extremely stable and also allowed the assembly to be moved around very easily. We mocked up the assembly and set some threaded rod to engage the rotor and hold it up against the stainless tube. Drilled 2 holes in the barrel and used some nuts on either side to sandwich the barrel, then lightly welded one side so it doesn't move.
I dropped the stainless tube down on to the barrel, centered it to the hole, and welded it along the inside and the outside anywhere the fishmouth was tight. If there was an open spot, I left it open for air intake purposes.
I then drilled some holes in the rotor to allow the rods to pass through. Left a little length on the rods for future height/airgap to stainless tube tuning. More on that later.
With the skillet centered on the rotor, the angled handle hit the edge of rotor and wouldn't allow it to sit squarely. I busted out the plasma cutter to liquefy some metal and then blow it away for clearance purposes Not pictured - I also welded up a few dowels to the rotor on the opposite end of the skillet's handle to provide a positive stop when installing the rotor. It makes for easy centering/locating of all of the components.
Finally, I picked one of the pre-existing holes and enlarged it to roughly 3/4" for an oil supply port.
We flipped the assembly back over (with the rotor installed) and measured the distance from the bottom of the skillet to the floor. My helper made up a mini stool for the skillet to sit on while I used the plasma cutter to put a hole in my wall for the chimney piping. At this point, the helper wanted to see this thing in action (and so did I). I still don't have the automatic oil feed system in place, so I basically replicated the manual burn I did previously, although I was able to manually add some oil I put in a gear oil tube with one of those pointy nozzle tips on it. Unfortunately we made a classic blunder of forgetting to install the trim ring to the chimney piping prior to putting it through the wall. Similar to making a brake line flare without having the fitting already on the brake line.
Oh well, I should be able to pull the chimney piping out easily enough.
The system worked well, although I think I need to open a gap between the rotor and the stainless tube (or drill/cut some holes in the tube) to promote a better/cleaner burn. My emissions looked a little dark coming out of the chimney.

Friggin' BRILLIANT!

I'm not sure why that duplicate pictures shows up at the end of my last post. It isn't in the script.
Anyway, shoutout to fellow NICO member Wes who helped me navigate the McMaster-Carr vastness to find the fittings and valves I needed for oil control. I went with part number 3010N13 for the precision flow control (with barbed fittings) and 53505K171 for the fitting into the bucket (bulkhead fitting).

If I had more patience or time to wait for fittings, there's a better bulkhead option on Amazon here: https://www.amazon.com/Dernord-Stainles ... YG8ADAE66K
It comes with an integrated shut-off valve and has a nice bend to it. They also make non-bent versions. Mine has an integrated O-ring, and I threw another O-ring (oil resistant) on the back side where the nut cinches down.

On my previous burns where I was manually putting oil into the heater, I noticed some would sometimes come out the side of the rotor vents. If I didn't absolutely nail the oil placement, it could hit the other side of the disk and find its way out. So I picked up a little pipe at home depot and ground it down to fit inside the rotor to make a tube/chute so the oil can't escape if its not perfectly on target. ^Wish I had a lathe at home. I spent a lot of time on the bench grinder with that.
I then welded it to the rotor on the inside. I re-installed the rotor to the rest of the assembly and then rigged up an oil feed tube from the same material I made the legs out of. I just so happen to have a bunch of it laying around.
I cut the pipe and tacked it in place until I'm sure its where I want it to be and it works as expected. Here's the (mostly) completed setup. Harbor Freight bucket baby!! The other barbed side of the flow control doesn't actually clamp to anything. It just sits in the steel tube and dumps freely. I recently witnessed a bucket melt when it got too close to a fire (not mine), and was very cognizant of this during tonight's burn. The harbor freight bucket got a little too warm for my liking, so I put some of this reflector insulator tape on it that I've had hanging around for years. After that, I was free to crank it up. ^Warm girlfriend is happy girlfriend.

On another note, the last burn I did (with manual feed) resulted in the rotor cracking. It was pretty loud and startled the heck out of myself and the other guy in the shop. No such drama tonight. Hopefully its done doing that. Next up is welding in some fins to better promote heat transfer. I can still feel a LOT of heat both on the chimney pipe as well as coming out of the chimney itself. Even still, it was 37 degrees out tonight and with the heater on medium to medium low, the 36' x 36' uninsulated shop with tall ceilings was 52 degrees. I did a rack & pinion bellows and tie rod end while being perfectly comfortable at that temperature.

Local guy around here has a plasma cutting side hustle thing going on. Makes signs for local businesses and such. He had a BUNCH of scrap steel laying around, so we cut some of it up for the fins. Going to start with just the barrel and then maybe do the chimney as well depending on how much heat is still going outside.
Snapped some chalk lines to mark where I need to cut to put the fins. Instead of radiusing the steel, I'm just dropping it right in the slot. Should pull more heat out that way.

Apparently there was some residual oil left in the pan, and it ignited while I was cutting through the steel. I waited for it to burn off before continuing. Put the level on the fins, although I don't think it matters much... they tend to warp a bit during welding anyway. I was welding in the 2nd fin when I unfortunately ran out of welding wire ^So here's how it sits now. I picked up some more wire yesterday and should make some more progress here soon.
On another note, this thing is still rolling coal when it burns. I sort of worry about it building carbon deposits all over everything. I'm thinking its either due to my lack of holes in my burn tube, or lack of turbulent air or something in the chamber between the skillet and the rotor. Reviewing the videos, I don't see anyone using drilled rotors like mine. The first one in this post uses a hole through the center of the pan as the air intake, with some clever holes to promote turbulence and airflow. Being that the skillet was so cheap, I may go ahead and try that design. Problem is I have to cover up all of the ports and side-vents in the rotor, so I'll have to make a shield for that.

Do you have a laser thermometer?

I do not, however once you get it hot enough, you can tell approximately by color.

Dumb question, J - How are you filtering the fuel oil?

I'm not for what I'm burning right now (oil change oil). When it comes time to burn the turkey fryer stuff, I'll probably just run it through a fine strainer/sifter so I don't clog up the metering valve

Oil change oil just seems to attract chunks, the minute it hits the drain pan. Bugs, leaves, chunks of debris off the undercarriage, whatever.

Yeah. I looked for that sort of thing while I was pouring the oil into the bucket, but really didn't see any.
I watched another video of a guy that had a metal tank with a rounded bottom that he put the outlet fitting at the lowest point and mentioned it collects stuff and clogs the valve, so he changed it to put it up a few inches.
My fitting is proud of the bottom of the bucket (it sticks through for the backing nut to grab), so I'm hoping to accomplish the same thing. I can run it down and see if there's any sediment there next time I fire it.

Alright G, I ran it down til it died and took a picture of the bucket. Honestly it was too dark to see anything. I tilted it forward to put more oil down the tube and try to see the back/bottom, but it was still pretty dark. I ran my finger along the bottom and didn't come up with any thick sludge or chunks, but I imagine as time goes on, its certainly not going to get any better. That being said, tonight I was burning ATF from a job I did last night. 08 Chevy cobalt with 250+k on it had a leaky trans pan, so I dropped it and replaced the gasket. Apparently dropping the pan yields over 7 quarts of fluid
Anyway, the pan looked pretty damn clean, and the fluid wasn't horrible surprisingly. I increased my number of heat exchanger fins to 4 and have been experimenting with airgap setups between the rotor, tube, and skillet. There's a lot of different setups out there that seem to contradict each other, so I've been curious about what works best with my setup. I've been running with a gap between the rotor and the stainless burn tube to allow for fresh air intake/scavenging, but my exhaust seems to be more black when I do that, and burn temps seem to be lower. Looking at the fist video I posted here, the guy uses a central intake tube and nothing else. I'm probably going to try to build one of those next.
In the mean time, I put my skillet on a stone grinding wheel on top of a jack to allow myself to adjust it up and down without cooking anything underneath it. Tonight's test what with the rotor secured fairly well up against the burn tube, so as to force all of the incoming air over/through the skillet burn chamber to increase turbulence. The burn tube and skillet both got cherry red, and the emissions out of the exhaust were among the best I've seen them, although still richer/more black than what I've seen on youtube.

It was a decently cold night. There was substantial frost on my walks from the shop to the house to grab beers and such. The temperature in the shop was fairly comfortable for doing work. I still wore a hoodie though. The fins seem to be doing a really good job of pulling the heat out of the burn aparatus and putting it into the room. I intend on adding 2 more to the barrel assembly, and maybe some to the chimney as well.

Oh I forgot to mention I also welded some sheet metal around the vents of the rotors and some of the drill holes to force the air to go lower through the skillet. I imagine that's the right call to prevent any "vacuum leaks" when I go to the alternate air intake system.

I take it you've got a fan running across the heat sinks to circulate the air?

Yeah just a little oscillating fan. Nothing special.

I finished up the fins the other day. Unfortunately it was time to give the borrowed plasma cutter back to the owner I must say the fins do make a huge difference. I've seen a few other waste oil heaters with a pipe or 2 through the middle of them (with a fan blowing through it), but never fins off the top. Not sure why more people don't do it... they have to be sending a ton of heat out of the exhaust/chimney. I might still put some on the chimney as well. We'll see.
I got the welder and method dialed in fairly well too. This barrel's sheet metal is impressively thin... like 20 or 22 gauge. Fins are 16 gauge. Every now and then I was blowing a hole through the barrel. I was doing some work in the shop the other night fairly far away from the heater, so it wasn't quite as warm as what I've been doing (closer to the heater). I had her turned up pretty good to accommodate and I think I hit a new temperature record. The rivet holding the handle on the stainless tube melted. I'm assuming its aluminum or some sort of aluminum alloy. Google says it melts around 1220F, but looking at the color of the tube, I would guess I was a bit higher than that (maybe 1450 or so).