USED OIL - DIESEL BLENDING MACHINE
…“One litre of waste oil can contaminate one million litres of underground water. Correct disposal of waste oil protects the environment and underground water.”
SOME of the well-known and documented ways of usefully utilising waste oil include laundering and re-blending. In the process of laundering, the waste oil is cleaned by filtration and returned for use with or no additive replenishment.
This way you get some more life from waste oil. Typically, it is easier to launder waste oil from low contamination applications such as hydraulic systems and industrial systems than from engine oil circulation systems.
In re-blending, waste oil is treated to extract base oil which is later on blended with appropriate additives to make a finished product. Additionally, waste oil can be used as furnace oil.
Protecting the environment is essential to everyone on the planet. The declining resources of fossil fuels have created a need to use the current resources we have more prudently.
Industries need to run and there are many industries that use a lot of oil to operate their machinery. Subsequently they generate a lot of used oil.
Not only do they use a lot of oil but they use a lot of diesel as well. For instance, in 2019 Zambia used about 33 million litres of oil. I’m talking about oil and not fuel.
The cost of buying huge volume of diesel and oil can be very high. Many companies face a lot of challenges in disposing of waste oil. Indiscriminate disposal can be very costly. Some operations have been suspended before for non-compliance with local environmental regulations.
Troubled by dwindling crude oil global reserves and the potential environmental damages caused by annual billions of litres of global waste oil, industry experts have been burning nerves on limited options aimed at minimising severe environmental consequences.
Some of the options such as laundering and re-blending have been comforting options. Reminded by the fact that some of the very first diesel engines used pure vegetable oil as fuel, experts have been making interesting progress on this path.
At the 1900 World Fair, Otto Company displayed an engine it designed which ran on pure peanut oil. Diesel engines could run on soy, canola, corn and sunflower oil.
Whether modern diesel engines could be powered by pure vegetable oil without serious implication is not a matter for this article. It is however, known that before the advent of crude oil, vegetable oil was used as fuel in diesel engines.
Therefore, investigations have been directed at possibilities of blending a certain volume of waste oil with diesel. It is argued that this blended mix produces a high quality diesel.
The perceived benefits of this experiment are two-fold. First and foremost, it provides a better option of disposing waste oil.
Instead of disposing it off and potentially damaging the environment, you use it by adding the same to diesel at a certain ratio. The other perceived benefit is that it helps customers save money.
It is argued that instead of throwing away millions of litres of waste oil, you could save a huge sum of money by blending waste oil with your existing diesel stock at a certain ratio; thus increasing your diesel stock.
At a certain blending ratio, a certain volume of waste oil added to a certain volume of clean diesel will produce a bigger volume of resultant diesel. Since, you will now have more diesel; you will spend less on procuring new stocks.
In September, 2009, I interviewed the managing director of JD Lubriservices; a South Africa-based company whose separate division specialises in onsite used oil recycling for both large and small volume clients.
Seated by the swimming pool behind his lovely house in a secure white dominated suburb, he patiently narrated how this concept has helped many.
At that time, they had just introduced the WOTEC system which refines and purifies used oils on-site and blends it into diesel or heating fuel at pre-selected rates often between one percent to five percent.
Although this may sound complicated, the process is actually quite simple. The used oil, which could otherwise be disposed of is brought in through one of the inlet valves of the WOTEC.
It is processed and cleaned before being blended with the diesel fuel, which enters through a different inlet valve. The mixture is reduced to microscopic particles that blend together in a static mixer.
The blend ratio can be set anywhere from one percent to five percent; meaning that at five percent you will use 9.5 litres of diesel fuel to get 10 litres of new blended diesel. The additional litre comes from the used oil that is blended in to the diesel fuel.
The final process in the WOTEC system is the dehydration chamber. After the fuel and the used oil has blended, the new blended mixture is directed to an assembly which removes more than 99 percent of emulsified or free water, as well as any particles four microns or larger.
Once the processed used oil is blended into the fuel flow, it will not separate. The resultant diesel can be pumped directly into a fuel tank or held for future use in a storage tank.
Retrieving a free litre of diesel fuel from waste oil is something that can go a long way. Further, this could help reduce the buildup of used oil at customer site along with the hassles of disposing it.
Information has it that the blended diesel passes stringent tests on critical fuel characteristics demanded by some renowned Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs).
Some of these OEMs have recognised the WOTEC system as a viable and acceptable option of disposing off waste oil by transforming it to diesel fuel. It is reported that several major clients have experimented the WOTEC and have not regretted at all.
The WOTEC system is perhaps more appropriately called used Oil/diesel fuel blender. It is simple and affordable.