Would it be possible to convert used vegatble oil into a Kerosene/paraffin substitute for lamps/heaters in the same way that Deisel can be produced? Rising cost and scarcity of paraffin could make this a viable option, that would not have the same tax issues as vehicle fuel. Any chemists out there have any thoughts?
I think that would be certainly possible although the exact makeup would be a little different from the kero produced from petroleum feedstocks. The main problem I think, isn't the technology knowhow of it but the actual market demand. Perhaps the demand for the heavier heating oil type kerosene would still be sufficiently high to justify large scale production. However, I'm somewhat doubtful that the demand for the type of kero used in our pressure lamps and stoves would ever increase again. These are a little lighter than those used for heating. The general obsolescense of these liquid-fueled pressurized appliances don't seem to help. Besides the few of us here and others in similar collector groups, I think there just aren't enough people or equipment around the World that require the use of plain old kerosene anymore. I'd say, not even in third-World countries. The numbers are a lot lower now as compared to even five to ten years back. It is not in the same league as biodiesel unless biokerosene becomes a major land-based automotive fuel. In general biofuels are not as thermally stable as petroleum-based ones. Therefore, they might not be very ideal for devices that work on the principle of fuel vaporization by means of heated generators.
Jet aircraft use kerosene as fuel. In the USA Jet-A is the standard jet kerosene. In the rest of the world it is generally Jet-A1 which is kerosene with a some antifreeze. Just about all of the “over the counter” kerosene sold in Australia is jet fuel dyed blue. I use Jet-A1 in all my kerosene lamps and stoves. Logically, while jets and turbo helicopters are flying, they will require kerosene. Recently Shell trialled synthetic kerosene on a commercial jet flight in Europe. The problem in some countries it seems is that kerosene is not being packaged or supplied to the retail market. There will be plenty of kerosene at the major airports. Tony
Kerosene with chip fat: BP starts production of bio-fuel for aviation But they will only add 5% to the regular fuel so far. It is all a matter of how much money you want to spend and how much energy you want to waste to change one kind of energy source into another. Erik
@Erik Leger Airbus A380, has completed a trial flight powered on cooking oil. An A380 superjumbo just completed a flight powered by cooking oil So if you can power a jet engine, you can run a lantern.
This chap on YouTube does a lot of experimenting here is a video on making biodiesel and here he burns biodiesel in a pressure stove but states it would be the same in a lamp He has a very interesting channel. https://www.youtube.com/c/RobertMurraySmith/videos
That’s lousy combustion with a total absence of blue flame. Were that stuff to fuel a pressure lantern the mantle would rapidly blacken and vapourisation would fail - looks like it’s failing in the Chinese BRS 12 stove used. Stoves put out blue flames when healthy and when the fuel’s the proper stuff. John
Yes, it needs refinment, it is a rough and ready experiment and not a high grade product you buy from the shops, any suggestion as to improving it?
@MYN might, he’s knowledgeable on fuels. The snag with anything less than refined fuel is the rapid clogging and degradation of the stove, or lantern, generator and that would prove costlier than savings on fuel. Getting a flame, of sorts, from that stove is no real feat. Burning filtered used cooking oil wouldn’t look much different.
Burning fuels in a jet engine is very much different from the way in which liquid-fueled pressurized stove works. In jet engines, they don't rely on heated vaporizers to get the fuel into gaseous state. They atomize it via special nozzles, premix with air and fed into the engine for further multistage compression by means of rotating turbo jet fan/impeller blades. That is the primary difference. Liquid fuels for engines do not experience the same thermal breakdown as they would in heated generators. There is no necessity of preheating them to vaporization temperatures. They only need to 'warm' it to ensure that they don't become viscous in sub-zero temperatures. That makes all the difference. The set of engineering problems encountered are very different between them. Most of the problems associated with stoves and lanterns are concerning fuel breakdowns/decomposition before it gets ejected from the jets/gas tips. Whereas, in jet engines or pretty much anything that uses atomizing nozzles, the problems are instead, more associated with what happens after the fuel is ejected from the nozzles, such as burning charateristics, attaining the necessary specific impulse for thrusting and effects of combustion byproducts, etc. In my view, the fuel-related problems are in fact, easier to tackle in jet engines as compared to liquid-fueled pressurized lanterns and stoves.
Plant oil has totally different molecular structure. It doesn't vaporize same way as mineral fuel does. It cracks and results in oil char. It will block the vaporizer. No use for paraffine lamps, lanterns or cookers. Afaik.
