Waste Oil?

I usually just burn it in the outdoor furnace. Pour half gallon on the wood when filling in the morning and at night. My grandfather did the same thing with the airtight in his shop.

In April the County allows unrestricted burning of debris (timber) without a permit. I just throw the used oil on the burn piles as I burn them. The piles are usually a little wet so the oil helps.

John C. said:

Then I found out that they don't decontaminate anything. They just dump the oil into a bigger tank which drops the percentage of contamination down below limits and they treat you like you are poisoning the world.....

Just another pollution racket to screw an unknowing business and public.

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Much on the environmental clean up is a racket as you say. It's all about making a fortune moving pollution from point A to point B. When I worked on offshore gas platforms, back in the 80's we injected contaminated or unsalable products into dead oil/gas wells and eventually cemented those wells. Then laws were passed and we had to put it in transporters, load them on boats and take them to the beach and pay a company a very large sum to take it. That company would take the product to a dead oil/gas well and inject it and eventually cement it.
Look into asbestos removal and it's even more ridiculous.

I know of one guy who had a shop at home and he heated it with wood. but to dispose of his used oil he had a simple set up. 55 gallon drum set up a bit higher than the wood stove and across the back of the shop from the stove. He then ran a 3/8 copper line from the bottom off the drum over to the wood stove. Installed a inline valve in the copper tubing and once wood fire was up and running good he would open the valve just enough to let it drip in to the fire but not so much it would cause any noticeable smell or smoke. Just had to remember to turn off the valve before leaving the shop!

crane operator said:

Hmm.. Old doug has problems getting rid of old tires, I've got some waste oil, its been cloudy and dark- rainy- weather here a lot lately,




No, no , no- you can't think things like that anymore...........

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Usedter burn them in a 60' tall silo, only clue was all them cows layin around the silo, to keep warm...

I did the oil dripper thing for years in the early days. Worked great. Around here everybody has oil burners but not enough of their own oil so I get a buck a gallon out of em. It pays for half of my LP shop heat!

When dripping oil into a woodstove, does the drip delivery tube run right into the stove, or stop short somewhere above it and somehow drip down from a distance ( through a hole into the stove, funnel, etc). My dad used to mention doing this, but I've forgotten this detail. I'm thinking the pipe runs into the stove, but thought id better check.

The one's I've seen that use the drip method have a copper pipe that runs directly into the stove, some actually put a steel plate in the stove for it to land on as a "hot plate" that it burns on top of, Others just have it land on the wood.

crane operator said:

Hmm.. Old doug has problems getting rid of old tires, I've got some waste oil, its been cloudy and dark- rainy- weather here a lot lately,




No, no , no- you can't think things like that anymore...........

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Oh yes you can...!! A story of 100+ worn out truck tyres, a few gallons of diesel/used oil plus an old industrial chimney springs to mind ........

I have about 25 gallons a year and give it to the local napa store or boat repair business.

My in law in Indiana usually produced around 100 a year and had a real hard time finding someone to take it. Had to take in gallon jugs a little at a time which was rough. Found a place in Paoli which will take but has to take it to them.

I live out in the country w/ no trash p-up..
Everyone has to take their trash to the "solid waste disposal site"..[dump]
A bin w/ a compactor for household trash & different large open containers labeled for "other" stuff..
But every 1 of the places around the State, have an oil recycling station..
A BIG 2 funnel container where you dump your used oil.. looks to be about a 500 gal container??
It "says"> NOT for commercial use.. but on numerous occasions I'v seen guys standing there, pouring in 5 gal pails..
I guess its better than pouring it out on the fields.??

thepumpguysc said:

I guess its better than pouring it out on the fields.??

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I'll second that

KY Petroleum Recyclers (Grade Lane) in Louisville will take all anyone want's to give, or at least that was the way it was a some years ago. Since then I've moved

Really appreciate all the replies. Still mulling over what to do, but leaning towards a setup like Kshansen and Crane operator describe. I need a wood stove in the shop anyways and have a couple empty metal barrels to get a drip setup together.

Do you guys see any check valve or something similar necessary? Wondering what kind of fire hazard I'm creating in my shop with all those precious tools.

Insurance companies and shop wood stoves do not get along, They're afraid you will have the stove blazing with the door open while removing the rusty gas tank from a vehicle and spilling gas all over the place. Around here lots of people have wood stoves in their shops and I've never heard of anyone burning their shop down. Just have the firebox at least 30" off the floor because gasoline fumes sink.

One operating tip I can give is: as the oil warms up it gets thinner and flows faster. Don't turn the drip on and go for a long lunch. Had my wood stove cherry red a few times when I had it. now I just burn oil with a Clean burn furnace. 7500hrs on it with very few problems.

How do people who burn waste oil in stoves and furnaces deal with filtration? It seems like that would be a huge burden. Oily drain pans get dust and dirt in them and diesel engine soot in the oil clogs things up. Do you separate the water out before filtering the oil? If not, doesn't the crud always clog up the water drain valve?

check said:

How do people who burn waste oil in stoves and furnaces deal with filtration? It seems like that would be a huge burden. Oily drain pans get dust and dirt in them and diesel engine soot in the oil clogs things up. Do you separate the water out before filtering the oil? If not, doesn't the crud always clog up the water drain valve?

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Sorry about the length of this one got typing and thinking and lost track of what I was doing!

Well I tried very hard to not get any water into the used oil that was going to heater!

A few things that may have helped with out system.

First as most of our service work is done during the warmer months here in NY as the quarry is more or lest shut down for winter months. That means most of the used oil generated sits for a good period of time in the outside storage tank. This means any dirt or water has time to settle to the bottom of the tank. Tried to make it a point to drain off the bottom of the tank, but that was not always done.

Suction line in the outside tank was installed a few inches up to also keep out any settling crap.

On the initial installation of used oil heaters we did experience problems with oil being too thick to pump inside in coldest days. To take care of this a 275 Gallon tank was installed in the shop as a "day tank". This was connected to the outside main storage tank with a separate pump controlled by a float switch in the "day tank". Now you have to recall that this set-up was for a shop heated by a pair of 500,000 BTU heaters so amount of used oil we were dealing with was much more than most shops may be dealing with.

Each of these 500,000 BTU heaters had separate suction pumps and filters coming from the "day tank". I always felt the filters with the washout screens were on the small size for that size of heater as they were not a lot bigger than a large coffee mug. If I had the control of them I would have installed a pair of filter heads that took the same large spin on filters as we used on the Cat haul trucks along with some type of differential pressure gauges to let us know when they were stating to get plugged.

I can imagine a few other things one could do to improve this set up. Like running one heat duct from the used oil heater to blow right at the "day tank" to "pre-heat the oil before it went to the filters on the way to the furnace. Or even having a circulating pump with filter hooked to the "day tank" to pre-filter the oil before heading to the furnace. But adding to the complication of the system might not be worth while if one had better control over what oil was dumped in to the system.

Too many people at the quarry looked at our system a a "disposal system" and not a heating system. They seemed to think anything that "might" burn was fair game for dumping in the tank. Drain a crusher or speed reducer of oil that looks like metal flake paint you would use on a 1950's custom car that would get dumped in. Tearing down a machine and ten gallons of antifreeze drops in the drain pan for the engine oil that to could go in if I was not watching right along with the chunks of dirt off the frame!

KsHansen covered it pretty good. one thing I do with oil I get from neighbors is leave it outside in barrels. The water will freeze in the bottom. I leave it overnight in the shop than pump the oil off the top. the water will stay frozen in the barrel for a day or two sitting in the shop.

farmerlund said:

KsHansen covered it pretty good. one thing I do with oil I get from neighbors is leave it outside in barrels. The water will freeze in the bottom. I leave it overnight in the shop than pump the oil off the top. the water will stay frozen in the barrel for a day or two sitting in the shop.

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That's is another thing we would do! Kind of like a reverse still kind of thing. Only problem is if there is too much antifreeze in it! Then it would go in the "non-burnable" drum. if we didn't want to spend a lot of time with it.

We did have a "dump station" in the shop made out of an old hydraulic tank from a Hough loader. It had a drain valve on the very bottom and the suction port for the "outside storage tank" was about a foot up so that was another place we could let the gravity separation work for us.

One of our biggest problems was when we were low on used oil and one of our other plants had excess they would have the local oil supplier send a tanker truck to the other plant and pump right from their tank straight to our outside storage tank. We then had no real control over what we were getting.

Letting water freeze in the bottom of the drum could result in a ruptured drum and oil all over the place.

An old friend of ours used to be the manager of a waste oil plant/depot. Had a couple dozen or so large "silos" for holding oil, and a building for processing it. Had a tour there once (~20years ago) and it seemed they were basically heating it to above 100 degrees C to steam the water out, after which it was run through various filters. It was then saleable as heating oil, ie non waste!

There was a constant stream of oily looking tankers on 5th wheels being dragged in, emptied and sent out with "product". Quite a business.