I am planning on using B100 as heating oil this winter. (I experimented with a WVO blend last with near catasrophic results.) I have a Beckett model "AFG" series oil burner & a New Yorker Boiler. It's about 7 years old. Is this as easy as running B100 in a car, (just pour in & go) or do I need to make any modifications? I'd appreciate any input as I can't seem to find a clear answer on this & I will need to make the decision whether to "prebuy" oil for this winter or not.

Just saw a segment on local news that Bates college will be "experimenting" with B5 as a heating oil in a few dormitories this winter. I guess B100 would be a big risk then? Anyone have any thoughts or experience?

You may want to think about using B100 again. As has been noted many places before, the BioD will eat up rubber seals in pumps, etc. If your furnace wasn't designed for BioD, you may start to see leaks and component failures much sooner than expected. Todd

I ran across a company that makes a small oil vented wall heater and an on demand water heater that they claim will run on BD. Look at www.toyotomiusa.com. The heater is OM-22 and the water heater is OM-148. I believe that each unit sold for around $1500 each. If I had what you have and an underground or inside storage tank, I would give it a try. You could also rig a small tank to the supply line and experiment with different blends. In the Pacific Northwest most oil supplier will only supply B5 or B20 for oil furnaces due to gelling and old furnaces. Good luck!

Anyone have any experience with this? Claims to capable of burning B100... http://www.websterfuelpumps.com/ln4756.pdf

With BioD eating rubber seals, is that from the WVO or virgin oil?

to aviod the deterioration of rubber hoses from the use of Biodiesel you have to replace the rubber hoses with fluroelastomer hoses and seals. In the long run ruber hoses wil go bad and leak. higher the Bxx the faster the deterioration. If your going B20 then remember your going to have to change the hoses to some type of syenthetic hose. Hell Your going to replaces them anyway so go B20+ and when your ready and done shopping around for new hoses do it then. REASON: what are you going to do with used hoses lieing around. your going to throw them away anyways. This maybe a money maker

Hi Mike I am heating my house with B100 with no problems so far. I have been running my 2 vans and car on B100 and now I'm heating my house with it . The only thing I have changed is the filter and lines to clear plastic . Do not change the jet it works great with the old tip.I tryed the diferant mixs from Jurney to forever and it did not work at all just pluged up my pump . So I use the same B100 as I use for my vans and car . I just started a few weeks ago but so far no leaks just real cheap heat. The furnace was an old one someone gave me . It should cost me about $30. a mounth to heat my old 1200 sq.ft. home. With the price of home heating oil I could replace the pump every mounth and still save money. CHECK MY AIR CARE SCORE ON B100 http://halverson.ca/aircare/aircare.pdf

I have 1 season experience,1 yr. old afg beckett, heated fuel line and nozzle heater,B90,#1 10, It isn't totally easy. 600 gallons in the basement for this season. long idle periods hard; when it runs once per hour it's better. ps-it's good dry clean biodiesel.

I live in PA and I have been using B100 to heat my home & hot water for almost a year now. My tank and boiler are almost 25 years old. My 275 tank is in the basement next to my boiler so I didn't need to worry about gel problems. I had expected to have to change my filter several times, adjust my injector size, and possible upgrade my injection pump to one that had seals that could handle the B100.

Expecting that I added B100 to my tank that was half full of #2 and I waited to see what would happen, everything ran fine so I waited until it was down to 1/4 a tank and I filled agian with B100. Everything was still fine for several months. The next time it was down to 1/4 I filled it again with B100, so I have been running on almost 100% B100 for several months now and everything is running great. I figured I would change the filter when it got clogged but it never did. I just changed it a few weeks ago as part of my yearly service. I haven't had any leaks or problems with my pump.

Next month I am going to have my heater company check the emissions which will determine if the injector size needs to be adjusted.

 

Yes, you will probably wind up changing out the fuel pumps if they do not have viton seals, in particulary the higher percentages of blend, the only other issues you may have is cold flow problems. My company Thermal Stability Systems manufacture thermal tank blankets and self contained heating units for above ground oil storage tanks, without adding any additives, regardless of what kind of fuel or percentage of Bioheat you may be blending. Please feel free to check out our website.

 http://www.geocities.com/thermalstabilitysystems/

We have been selling B-99, B-100 for home heating for 4 years now to about 40 homes in the Seattle area with little to no problems. We recommend that after we delivery our first tank of biodiesel that you get your furnace tuned up to be optimized for the biodiesel and have a spare filter and know how to change it.  We have yet to see a pump leak yet. If a furnace breakdown would be a disaster for you then you may wish to replace the pump with a biodiesel compatible pump. Furnaces do not have rubber hoses that i have ever seen and since furnace fuel tank are not traveling around shaking up the continents of the tank biodiesel seem to have much less cleaning effect that in a car. So far worst case has been one filter change. For long term storage we recommend using a biocide and a fuel stabilizer. We have lots of repeat business so B-99 must work well.

I just got off the phone with the tech support at RW Beckett asking if my burner would work with b100 - he said they don't recommend anything beyond b5 because of "neoprene shaft seals".  I haven't seen any mention of this anywhere.  Can you comment?

I'm using b100 in my oil furnace so far the only thing I had to change was the burner air control (less air for bio) Some older furnaces won't run it because the lower pump pressures are not sufficient to atomize the thicker fuel fine enough to get started with the  arc from the electrode -and to run as well. If you have a modern furnace ask your oil burner guy if you can have viton seals installed this will solve the seal problem.

It's sure nice not having to burn that smelly Dino Diesel.

   Greasefreeze

The recommended oil pump for B100 is the Webster M34DM-3 fuel pump this has Viton seals and should replace most existing Suntec or Webster pumps on beckett burners. It has been a eye opening learning experience experimenting with this years heating season using unwashed boidiesel (to save on waste water disposal). I will post the results in some of the threads under bioheat. In a nutshell; Clean fuel= clean boiler.

I have asked the pump expert at Maltz Sales Co. about the webster pump that you mention and they confirmed that it is a direct replacement for many existing Suntec pumps on Beckett burners; however it has a diaphram in it to control pressure. My beckett burner uses a Beckett Cleancut (made by Suntec) A2EA pump (set stock to 140 psi) that has an electronic soleniod instead of diaphram. Webster does not currently make a replacement for this pump. I am looking now at the possibility of replacing the standard seals with viton seals.

I have been running B50 for several months now (as a first step towards B100) and other than a slightly rougher-sounding burn cycle all seems to be working well. I would like to smooth the burn out somewhat, but I have not come up with the right combination yet.

I started the whole process by converting my old-style oil tank filter over to a filter made specifically for biodiesel from All Thermal Supply (GAR-BER 11BV-R OIL FILTER GARBER REPLACEMENT SPIN-ON). Thay make an aluminum head that replaces the old head and allows you to change filters very easily like a standard auto filter. I also purchased several pump strainers from patriot-supply thinking that I would be changing the filter and strainers due to clogging. I haven't needed to change either yet. I also had a furnace tech friend attempt to tune the system by playing with different nozzles and air flow. We bumped the nozzle size in several steps from the stock 110 gph to 125gph and adjusted the air down, but I continue to hear sputtering during the burn cycle. We did not play with the pump pressure. The way I see it there are many variables but really only three to play with; pump pressure, air flow, and nozzle size. Does anyone have any experience with the best combination of these variables for highest efficiency. Does biodiesel generally require more or less air than #2 fuel oil? With a lower flash point, I thought less air would be required at the same pressure. When compared to #2, is a larger or smaller nozzle required? What role does the nozzle spray pattern play when switching to bio? My understanding is that the spray pattern is more a function of the chamber design, but I have heard that for some a hollow spray pattern has helped. Is the higher pump pressure of the cleancut pump better or worse when pushing the higher viscosity biodiesel? Since there are many combinations of these few variables, I was hoping to get a better general understanding before starting another round of tweaks and moving to B100.

Any real world experience would be most appreciated.

there is a company that makes pumps for b100 use on oil fired furnances they have viton seals and sells for about 125.00 and you dont have to worry about a warranty problem. i have the info at my bio-diesel plant. which is about 2 days away.

I use B100 as a back up fuel for a dual fuel (wood, hho) outdoor boiler.  I modded the Becket AFG clean cut (suntec) unit by going up one size for the nozzle, increasing the air pressure to 150, and rewiring the ignitor to be constant.  It is possible to move the cad unit forward or paint the inside of the flame tube silver and not have to wire the ignitor in constant mode.  I also purchased some ceramic line heaters from Patriot Supply and ran a heat cable along the fuel line to keep the fuel warm to prevent gelling.  Worked well all last winter and I intend to keep the same setup for this winter.

If you are using Biodiesel I believe the Gar-Ber filter is only rated to a B20 blend.  They do not use  viton seals.  There is a company called www.patriot-supply.com that sells the CIM-TEK 90553  that is a spin-on filter similar to the Garber good to B100 Biodiesel.  They also sell the WEBSTER M34DM-3  that is a oil pump good up to B100.  They also carry nozzles and other accessories for Biodiesel. 

I used B100 for the summer in my old heating system (Beckett AF burner in Burnham Jubilee boiler) and had no problems.  Tried SVO blend, but it did not work well at all in high concentrations.  I did have to change the filter several times because biofuel has a detergent effect and cleans the sludge from the inside of the oil tank.  I installed a new heating system this fall.  I installed a Schutz double wall oil tank in the heated basement.  The supply line is copper instead of the rubber one provided with the tank because the biofuel will cause it to break down and plug the filter.  I Put in a Buderus G-115/4 boiler with a Riello balanced flue burner.  I used a stainless steel sidewall vent with a fresh air intake for sealed combustion.  I also put in a Heatflo 50 gallon high output stainless steel indirect water heater and a stainless steel 400,000btu triangle tube indirect tube-in-shell pool heater for my hot tub.  The boiler is controlled with a Logomatic control with an outdoor sensor and a room sensor to modulate the boiler temperature to compensate for demand.  I will be replacing the stock flex supply with a biofuel approved flex supply made by Eibel.  Riello tech assist reccomended keeping a spare fuel pump because the seals could be affected by the biofuel.  Buderus said that the warrantee would be void if I used anything over B5, but would like me to keep them updated as to how everything is going.  The only modifications I had to make to get the burner to run well on B100 was to increase the pump pressure from 145psi to 190psi and adjust the air setting using a UEI combustion analyzer.  I have been running it since the end of November 2007 with no problems as of yet.  The distributor I have been using is www.yellowbiodiesel.com, but since he sells it as a road fuel, I have had to pay the state (Massachusetts) and federal road taxes.  If anyone knows how I could apply to get the taxes back, please let me know.