Installation confusion

[onenationundergoat]

I got a used tank from a guy who said it was an old Golden Fuel Systems or Greasel product. I emailed the company with pics and they said they had never seen anything like it before. I have no idea what company it's from, but it should still work. I'm going to add another veg tank with a heat exchanger and centrifuge before this tank because this used tank only has one 10 micron filter that obviously was not adequate since there was about two inches of tar-like sludge in the bottom of the tank that was nearly impossible to clean out.



Here's the tank. The guard rails and truck bed liner covering were added by a previous owner. It's steel, and has a division in the middle. Each side of the tank holds ~50 gallons, one side for clean, one side for dirty.






This part is where the coolant-heated Vormax filter goes. If you look down on the bottom left side of the tank, you'll see a hose attaching to a barb fitting. That hose is just there at the moment to keep water running out of the tank, but the barb goes into that side of the tank and has a baffle around it inside to prevent drawing water and sediment in. One either side of that barb on the outside are two more barbs for the coolant input and output. The entire bottom of the tank is a coolant heater.


I don't have a pic of my Vormax filter, but it looks like this:


It also has another part after the filter connected by the fuel line that I believe is a pump, but I'm not sure. It's gray metal, kinda cylindrical shaped, with a wire coming out from it, and it's about 5 or 6 inches in size. Don't have a pic right now.

There also this large threaded mount for something that I'm not sure what it is:

The previous owner didn't know either.

If you look at the bottom of the tank is this next pic you'll see two drain plugs, one for each side of the tank. On the top of the tank on each side is a tiny barb fitting that I believe is for venting. (Not pictured) I honestly can't figure out how the oil gets from the filter to the clean tank, and back out to the engine, assuming that the tank with the baffle is the dirty tank.


Also included was a length of hosing which is a wrapped together fuel line and two coolant lines, along with a 6-way (I think) switch, three extra 10 micron filter canisters, and about ten massive sock filters for prefiltering into the tank. There's also a hole cut in the top of the tank for a fuel gauge, which was included but doesn't fit (too long) and the plastic at the bottom is broken but may be able to be fixed. A third drain plug was replaced by a 110v water heater element for preheating before starting the engine.

Has anyone ever seen a tank like this before? Can you point me in the right direction on what goes in what order?

[sdwarf36]

Boy-that doesn't like veggie to me. I'm thinking that looks like he was blending. (waste oil-stale gas+ cenate booster. Or some other mix similar)
General thought is steel + veggie is a bad mix. But that looks like a pretty serious tank. Whats it weigh? (+ 700 lbs if the tanks are full.) Is it going to be mounted to one side?

[onenationundergoat]

The other tank is steel too. How bad is it? Is there a way to prevent polymerization? I have a 100 gallon aluminum tank that I could use, but it's so big that it's gonna mess with my clearance more than I'd like.

That gunk had leaves in it too! I can't believe this guy could even run on this stuff. I'm not sure what the tank weighs, but I'd guess between 100-150 lbs. It's not as heavy as it looks. It's gonna go inside the bus in the rear passenger corner. The other tank will be under the bus on the passenger side in front of the rear axle. Right in front of it is the stock 60 gallon diesel tank.

On the driver's side of the bus I have a cast iron clawfoot bathtub, a cast iron kitchen sink, a chest freezer, the AC unit, the huge generator, 150 lbs. of pet food, two 18 gallon grey water tanks, two 16 gallon black water tanks, and one 15 gallon fresh water tank. So it should balance out to a reasonable extent, especially with managing the way we pack things.

[onenationundergoat]

Will the polymerization be as big of a deal is we're going through the oil very quickly? Last year we drove 25,000 miles in four months. So if we use over 100 gallons a week will that be quick enough to hopefully prevent it?

[M1031A1]

There was a guy on Steel Soldiers that tried veggie oil as his main fuel. Two years or so later he was in Kansas headed home to the Carolinas when his fuel injection distributor pump finally had enough of the veggie oil and almost exploded in the engine compartment. Though a good idea, used veggie oil is acidic and when water is added in the cooking process will corrode the insides of the pump beyond repair. Technology hasn't caught up with these issues concerning pumps. In addition, I would NEVER use that tank for fuel due to the junk that is inside it. I have a New-Old-Stock Deuce-and-a-Half fuel tank that looked clean inside and clogged my fuel filter on my one ton dually in 36 hours of running. $500 to clean it, and another $1K to replace it this fall, I'm not going to ever use a used fuel tank on my vehicles again. I'm trying to share my observations from others experiences and my own to help save foreseeable headaches in the future.... Just sayin'.........

[onenationundergoat]

We cleaned the tank with lye to dissolve all the gunk. It was a lot of work. We won't be running just veg. It'll be switching between diesel and veg for starting and stopping to flush everything out.

[sdwarf36]

My own experience with steel was my processing 55 gallon drum. The first couple of years its what I used. I would strain my oil to 100 micron into the drum-heat it to 120 for 24 hours-let it cool for 24 before pumping it thru other filters. You could see the barrels inside go thru changes. Staining-build up-just more stuff you had to filter out. 50k miles into using oil like that I had a an injector pump stick wide open. Turns out there was a slug of build up that had free itself somewhere upstream. I took a blow gun to all my hoses-I was shocked how much stuff came out. My theory is all the tiny particles get caught up in 90* elbows (which I had a few in my system) and eventualy broke free. I blow out the lines now every couple of years as maintance.) I went back thru my filtering arrangment + drained everything down. The stuff in the bottom 10% of the barrel below where I picked the oil up had all kinds of jelly like stuff in it . (Poly?) Since switching to plastic barrels, I;ve never seen that again. And the system is much cleaner when i blow out the lines.

[onenationundergoat]

I read some forums about polymerization and steel tanks/drums. It seems that folks who use food grade steel drums that have the painted-on coating on the inside don't get the polymerization and have no problem with heat removing the coating. I wonder if I could paint the inside of my tank with that stuff?

[sdwarf36]

You'd have to have long skinny arms to get in there.
The choice is yours - but I think the risk is pretty high. I'd search out a plastic tank myself. ( look on ebay for boat gas tanks-that's what I ended up with.)

[onenationundergoat]

Ha well my long skinny arms managed to use a scraper and get to the corners! We're already in $700 on tanks. I already had the other two for $300, and the only reason I got this one is because it was supposed to be the whole system. Ugh.

[charles_m]

I used a 150 gallon aluminum side saddle tank off a freightliner semi. 300 bucks including the mounting straps, bolted to my frame rails and never gave me clearance issues. Its the best solution imho

[onenationundergoat]

Yeah we've decided to just use the 100 gallon aluminum tank. We'll use the Racor/Vormax coolant heated filter housing and the six way switch, and add a lil 55gph centrifuge powered by a 1/3 hp pump before any oil goes through the filter. The centrifuge puts out a lot more gph than we need though, so how should I handle that? Is there a way for me to make it return unneeded clean oil back to the tank?

I'm hoping I can make it so that I can switch around the centrifuge. Basically I'd like to use the pump and centrifuge into our tank from the restaurant, then have the pump and centrifuge draw out of the tank to go to the filter and then on its way to the engine.

[charles_m]

Im confused on your setup. Are you trying to run straight out of the centrifuge to the engine? Ive never seen this setup, and Im not sure its advisable. You want to have the centrifuge on it's own loop and have it clean in batches. Fill the clean tank with dirty oil, turn on the centrifuge, and in a couple hours, you have clean oil. I dont think id try any other way. Maybe im misunderstanding you...

[onenationundergoat]

Basically the centrifuge would be doing what you're saying, but at the same time part of it would be going through the Vormax filter to use while driving. Although I hadn't really thought of just letting it do its thing and then using the oil later. That makes a lot of sense.

[rvingoffgrid]

i wrote a article about bio fuels in the june issue of Bus conversion magazine. its a two part article the second part will be in july issue.