Just had a look through my shop -- seems I've been accumulating 5 gallon pails of used motor oil for some years now.

I know that in the "old days" lead contamination made this stuff fairly nasty to the environment. I also know that there are combustion byproducts like phenols that are far from benign. Hey, I grow food and drink groundwater, so I want to do my "due diligence."

Changing my own oil in yard equipment and cars/trucks has saved me a bundle. The local recycler will take it if I drop it off. But I wonder if I should be constructively lazy and keep a bunch around as emergency heating fuel etc.

Thoughts?

Back while I was in high school and working for a local gas station. The station owner had installed a waste oil furnace, it worked great. It also burnt about 4-gal of oil a day because the garage doors were always being opened.


Waist oil is a good useable fuel, but I don’t see the few gallons you have as very useful to you.

I don't know how useful 5-gal of any oil be without an ongoing supply of it like waste oil is an ongoing free supply to a auto repair shop? they get it for free and it's endless to them.

BobS- I also wonder if it matters if its synthetic or not? I've been collecting oilin 5g jugs too... I normally get rid of mine but it may be useful? I mix synthetic and non so probably not much usage?

A long time ago I read an article about a guy who recycled his own motor oil. He had a system where the used oil was first filtered through several (3-6?) rolls of toilet paper. This filtered out all the particulate matter, neutralized the acid components and actually replaced some minor chemicals of the oil that are also found in TP. The filtered oil drained down into a drum which was laying down on it's side. The oil was heated by a light bulb in this drum and this heating drove out the water. He had sent samples of his finished product in for testing somewhere and it came back as very, very close to fresh oil. He reused it over and over in his vehicles without any problems.

I think it was in Mother Earth News. I did a quick google search but couldn't find anything.

-Blast

That's very interesting. (And also slightly hilarious -- if I had to choose between motor oil and TP, which would it be? Both are the basis of civilization as we know it. Hmm.)

I know the base petroleum is completely recyclable. They clean out the crud, put in new additives, and sell it to you again.

It's the additives I'd worry about. Though in a real pinch, TP filtration plus a little fresh oil might keep an old Toyota or Chevy rolling a bit longer.

You're right, the 20 gallons I have won't go all that far, at least on its own.

I was thinking of it more as an additive, to bump up the heat value of low-grade fuels like sawdust, wood chips, bark, junk coal, etc. Once up to heat, and with a good draft, each would help the other burn.

In that context, a cup or two of used motor oil might be very useful. It might also be highly available when other traditional fuels are very scarce.

20g would be plenty to heat my garage for a winter. It depends where you live. In the Sacramento area of CA where I am we don't have to many cold days or nights, and even then they are not under 30* regularly so raising the garage temps to T-Shirt would be fairly easy and with good insulation it wouldn't need to run all day. So, for me 20g would be fine in a waste heater but like I said mine is a mix of syn, and non, and I don't have near 20g on hand.

I know I use some for drilling in steel, it's a good cheap lubricant. It would take a while to use 20g for this too

-Todd

Here's one source regarding burning oils, including synthetic:

http://www.michigan.gov/documents/deq/deq-ess-p2tas-burningusedoil_190423_7.pdf

They don't appear to raise any objections that I can see.

Waste Oil Burners
Waste Oil Heater

WASTE OIL-FIRED KILN

Awesome.

I would the store the oil, although the small amount involved wont go that far, its still better than not having it!

As well as use as heating fuel, small amounts of waste oil are useful for lighting fires of coal or wood if kindling is not available, much safer than useing gasoline or kerosene, which would likely also be in short supply.

Also used motor oil is useful as a lubricant for low tech purposes, especialy if WD40 or "3 in one" oil are in short supply.

Another use is to apply it to saw blades, files and other tools to prevent rust, especialy on items not in regular use.

If I understand correctly, is is illegal to burn waste motor oil in a single family residence but it is legal in a multi-family, apartment or commercial building. Go figure.

There are commercially available waste motor oil furnaces, Kagi and Econoheat are names that come to mind.

It is possible to heavily modify a conventional #2 home heating oil burner to run waste oil, but it is a hobby in itself. Key ingredients include changing from a pressure nozzle to an air-atomizing siphon nozzle, preheating the oil and using a "turbine" style retention head to keep the flame short.

You can also burn waste vegetable oil in the same setup.

Lots of info can be found here:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/altfuelfurnace
but you will need to do a lot of reading, no one there seems to be willing to lay it out in a FAQ.

Be aware that if you house burns down and the insurance company finds out that you tampered with the furnace, even if it is not the cause, you may have problems.

Since I have room to store it, I'll keep a stash. I don't think I'd burn it except in a genuine long-term emergency. I have other fuel sources at hand.

Oil is too useful as ... oil. I'm totally hard-core when it comes to reusing and recycling.

But I may do some experiments to learn how to use it effectively (clean burn etc.). This is a "resource" found all over, and if I'm travelling far from home, it could be useful.

Ultimately, I want to create a portable outdoor furnace for my acreage. Essentially, an insulated garden shed on skids that I can move from shop to house when I need it. Multi-fuel is the goal, and a combination of 12VDC and 120VAC fans to circulate heated air through insulated pipes. I just need time to put the parts together.

My understanding is that the anti-wear and anti-viscosity-breakdown additives are just as important as the base oil itself.

Time and heat break down these additives, which keep the oil working properly as a lubricant/coolant.

The reason my old Toyota Corolla got to 366,000 km and is still going is that I changed the oil regularly and without fail.

I wouldn't recycle oil in any vehicle I cared about, but in a long-term emergency cleaning/recycling would be better than doing nothing at all.

Just remembered another (totally off-topic) use for used motor oil:

Old-timer farmers used it on cattle to treat ringworm. Apparently it was quite effective.

Disclaimer: this is just a historical footnote, not a recommended treatment for people or pets. Anything that kills fungus is pretty toxic to everything else.

I've always wondered about these high efficiency oil filters that truckers use, like those from Gulf Coast Filters (just a random company I Googled). If you look on their page, they have various examples of rigs that have gone hundreds of thousands, even a million miles with no oil changes or just a single one, for the million mile rig. (Obviously, the filter needs to be changed regularly)

And according to the GCF website, additives mostly break down in response to dealing with the various contaminants that build up in an engine. They claim that since their filter keeps the oil very, very clean, the additives last a very long time because there is little contamination for the additives to interact with.

Yes, and they are sending lube oil samples off to the lab about every 1,000 hrs and then change the lube oil when the lab tells them to. They also change the regular and the special oil filters every 1,000 hours, when they take the oil samples.

That's interesting. It doesn't surprise me that a solution exists for heavy-duty industrial-scale applications. They will have done the math and decided if it pays off in the long term.

But that's a long way away from this tinkerer's garage with a ridiculous assortment of internal combustion engines. If I understand correctly, my used oil will already have broken-down additives because of the contaminants.

I sure wouldn't mind a super-duper filter system on my engines. It would save some work. Maybe we'll see that in passenger cars some day.