Keeping warm with vegetable oil?

[stevensfo]

Many years ago, a colleague suggested we start making biodiesel. I made one litre as an experiment, but the price of veg oil suddenly shot up, making the whole exercise pointless.

A few days ago, I did a search for vegetable oil ..waste oil....heaters...stoves...burners etc and was amazed at the number of DIY projects around. Some are fairly simple, e.g. https://www.instructables.com/How-to-Make-Oil-Stove/

Some are very impressive! e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAJ4d34EeeM

Apparently, if you feed the veg oil through an atomiser thingy, (sorry, forgot correct term) it's quite easy to burn it.

Not sure how veg oil compares with the price of diesel, but since you can use waste veg oil, it sounds a great excuse for reintroducing that deep fat fryer and living on chips through the winter!


Steve

[pje16]

Not sure how veg oil compares with the price of diesel, but since you can use waste veg oil, it sounds a great excuse for reintroducing that deep fat fryer and living on chips through the winter!
Steve

Pandemic paunches all round (no pun intended)

[Hallucigenia]

Not sure how veg oil compares with the price of diesel

Trouble is that the world's biggest exporter of veg oil was....Ukraine, so the price has shot up in recent months amid fears of a shortage. You'll see Walkers promoting their baked crisps "with 50% less fat" at the moment - that's because it means 50% less cooking oil.

You'll struggle to find veg oil at much below £2/litres - on a cursory search the cheapest I found was Tesco at £1.57/litre so the economics don't really work.

it sounds a great excuse for reintroducing that deep fat fryer and living on chips through the winter!

So now you're heating multiple litres of veg oil to 180°C when you weren't before, you need to pay for the extra energy you use that you weren't before...