Hot Water Burner Question...Can you Run Biodiesel?

PeakOfPerfection

PeakOfPerfection

New member
Just got a call from the freight company and my Hot Water Dragon is in their freight yard. I know the burner runs off of diesel but what about Biodiesel? Reason I ask is that I built a 500,000 BTU structural drying furnace system for my mold remediation company. I designed it to run off of Biodiesel for a number of reasons. First, I pull in with 150 Gal of fuel onboard and should there be a spill, with B-100 there is no environmental issue to worry about. Second, there are no fumes. Third, I live in a far left community and need to keep the natives happy.

The big drawbacks for B-100 are fuel lines...it requires synthetic. Cost, it is more expensive than diesel. It is an unbelievable solvent and will clean your tank/lines gumming up your filter with diesel crap...not a big deal if you run it all the time, but for a machine that has been running D2 for a long time, a potential issue. Last but not least, it is ever so slightly less BTU rich than D-2 so you will get a bit less heat. The advantages are that it burns far cleaner. I had my burner serviced after a few years and the service tech could NOT believe how clean everything was inside. No fumes are nice and said spill advantages.

So...anybody ever run their burner with B-99 or B-100 (or Even B-20)? And also does anybody know if the burner seals in the HWD are synthetic?
 
Can the burners run bio diesel, yes they can to my knowledge. Biggest issue is cost and availability. I wouldn't worry to much about the fumes assuming you have your air bands adjusted properly. In terms of spills, only time I have ever had to deal with a spill is when you fill up the tank and something happens. You want to avoid that, double your tank size to make sure you don't have to fill on site.

Unless your market demands it or you can charge for using the bio, ie seen as an enviro cleaner, I would stick to D2.
 
This could be an interesting thread. If you can run the biodiesel then all the guys cleaning restaurants could potentially save ALOT of money. If you can work out a deal with a few restaurants to take their waste oil you can make your own fuel. Not sure what regulations are in place if any for personal use as long as you don't sell any fuel.


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Some hood cleaners run bio. Farm diesel can be used since its not for driving. I think there's a way to set up to not pay the road tax on the green diesel but I don't know how to do it.
 
I'm more interested in running the straight grease without having to make it into bio. Lots of info on the web.
 
I recapture the road tax every year on my machines. It saves us a ton of money. You just need to keep the. Fill receipts separate and recorded. With the trucks that I run, we use a fuel service and have a separate card for the Truck and the machine. Like I said, it saves us a ton of money every year. Well worth the effort.
 
Scott Stone said:
I recapture the road tax every year on my machines. It saves us a ton of money. You just need to keep the. Fill receipts separate and recorded. With the trucks that I run, we use a fuel service and have a separate card for the Truck and the machine. Like I said, it saves us a ton of money every year. Well worth the effort.
Click to expand...

A ton of money, some don't know the discount on road tax can be instant.


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I use farm diesel (marked) and gas for the pressure washers, best time investment you can make.

A little research into the topic says that you might have to get another fuel pump at $150 or so, and there might be some issues with glycerin(Sp?). If you want to run straight used veggy oil, or SVO I think the glycerin will be you biggest issue along with some reliability.

I ran a car 7-8 years ago on svo with 2 tanks. Ran great, but the setup was not cheap and there were issues here and there. When I started pressure washing I thought about this heavily as every penny counted. In the end I decided the time and effort and downtime when things when wrong were not worth the money I made when it just ran. 2-3 hours lost is a lot of diesel instead of svo, and what do the customers think when you can't finish the job?
 
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