[azreal60]

I'm confused.

You posted 328 times on a website who's topic you don't believe in?

That's .. strange...

[dooberheim]

Used motor oil contains significant amounts of lead (from bearing materials in engines). Some of this will volatilize when burned and spread through the local environment as fume. Better to burn veg oil or similar - or just wood .

DK

[Dukat_Reloaded]

Too many people who believe in PeakOil also care too much for the environment. I showed an option for heating that uses old oil that would be landfilled or dumped somewhere, and the best that you have to say is, that would work but too polluting. The amount of lead in the oil would be minimal, and remember we used to add lead to fuel. You people are causing the problem, Nuclear power is a good energy source, but you have to say thats too polluting as well. The fact is, any new technology that is used to harness energy, you people will try to deny any benifical use of it. It's because of the environmentalists that we have a percived energy shortage, there is still plenty of oil untapped, but it's surrounded by red tape environmetalists have put in place.

[aflatoxin]

Here is a really cheap, low tech way to burn waste oil:

Take a five gallon bucket. Put about a quart of diesel in it. Add about 3 gallons of waste oil. Put a couple of pieces of dry firewood in there. Let it soak until the oil wicks up to the top of the firewood. Wrap it in polyethylene film (saran wrap) so you don't drip oil on the floor of your house. viola! Carbon-Enhanced firewood.

Now start a fire in your AIRTIGHT wood stove. When It gets stokin' hot, close the dampers and toss in a piece of the above engineered product. It will burn for hours.

1st caveat: airtight stoves can regulate the amount of air that goes to the modified log. Once I did this with a bad door gasket, and the wood burned like the fury of hell for about three hours. I was really glad I had a relined stainless steel chimney. Otherwise, I might have had a chimney fire. Next day with a new gasket, all was cool. Log burned for about 7 hours. I would not do this in an old style wood stove or a fireplace unless I was living in a cave and there was nothing to burn down.

2nd caveat: A lot of people believe that waste oil is full of all sorts of metals and hazardous stuff. Oil is mostly carbon and hydrogen. Tree bark is full of metals (Pb, Zn, etc). Oil is probably a cleaner fuel if burned completely. I wouldn't sweat the enviro issues with doing this.

[Frank]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('dukat', 'T')oo many people who believe in PeakOil also care too much for the environment. I showed an option for heating that uses old oil that would be landfilled or dumped somewhere, and the best that you have to say is, that would work but too polluting. The amount of lead in the oil would be minimal, and remember we used to add lead to fuel. You people are causing the problem, Nuclear power is a good energy source, but you have to say thats too polluting as well. The fact is, any new technology that is used to harness energy, you people will try to deny any benifical use of it. It's because of the environmentalists that we have a percived energy shortage, there is still plenty of oil untapped, but it's surrounded by red tape environmetalists have put in place.

[Ludi]

There's no such thing as "waste oil." It can be cleaned and reused. How irresponsible to just burn it.

[shakespear1]

aflatoxin

Love the ingenuity of this method. Thanks :>)

[untothislast]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('dukat', 'T')oo many people who believe in PeakOil also care too much for the environment.

[Dukat_Reloaded]

Yes it's important to look after the enviroment, but it gets to a point when we are just being silly. If there is something we want in the enviroment, there's no reason why we can't extract it resposibly. It's abit like a child, you can over care too much for the child, and it's not healthy for the child. My point is I believe the environment is less fragile than what many enviromentalists make it out to be. The ozone layer regenerates itself, cfc's do not cause any damage, the hole is natural, it expands and contacts every year. I have also explained many times on this forum that co2 does not cause global warming, with proof and infact co2 is good for the environment and us. People say look at all the hurricans, we I say thats natural, and if infact there weren't any hurricans this year, I would have been very suprised as the scientist say that the US is an a hurrican cycle period and is not out of the ordinary.

[azreal60]

My child is not responsible for weither i can breathe the next year.

I'm not worried about "destroying the planet", like so many evironmentalists have said. That's just a way to get chicks.

I'm worried about making the planet uninhabitable for humans. Kinda eliminates the point if we make it impossible for us to live here. Alot of the caculations we make on this board assume that the environment won't get worse. People make statements like
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'M')y point is I believe the environment is less fragile than what many enviromentalists make it out to be

[Guest]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('dukat', 'Y')es it's important to look after the enviroment, but it gets to a point when we are just being silly. If there is something we want in the enviroment, there's no reason why we can't extract it resposibly. It's abit like a child, you can over care too much for the child, and it's not healthy for the child. My point is I believe the environment is less fragile than what many enviromentalists make it out to be. The ozone layer regenerates itself, cfc's do not cause any damage, the hole is natural, it expands and contacts every year. I have also explained many times on this forum that co2 does not cause global warming, with proof and infact co2 is good for the environment and us. People say look at all the hurricans, we I say thats natural, and if infact there weren't any hurricans this year, I would have been very suprised as the scientist say that the US is an a hurrican cycle period and is not out of the ordinary.

[basil_hayden]

My thoughts above^^^^, login failed I guess..

[untothislast]

It's a fair point . . . the planet will endure pretty much whatever we throw at it. Some other life forms will ultimately emerge and thrive despite the mess we leave behind as our legacy. But is this what you want?

Our problem, is that the conditions we need to survive here as a species, have only existed for what is an historically short time. Further, the latitude of variability allowed - the temperatures within which crops will grow (for example) or that fish can survive in the oceans - is alarmingly narrow.

We tinker with the settings at our peril.

[aahala]

Where do you think you can get vast quantities of waste oil anyway? Are
you going to tour the countryside in your SUV looking for it?

Say you find a continuing source. Every few weeks you can walk 6 miles,
strap the 50 lbs. tank on your back and walk back.

And how about the idea that for $40 bucks and ordinary skill, one can
whip up a burning unit suitable for heating a building of any sort. The damn
thing could very well malfunction and burn the building down.

I needed a good laugh, so thanks for the thread.

[Dukat_Reloaded]

There will allways be fish in the sea, GW will not effect them much, if it warms up, fish which like the warmth will move to the warmer parts, and fish which like it colder will move north or south. Regardless of that, my point is everyone now lives in cities and rarely ventures into nature. Nature is on the nature channel and it's all reruns anyway. Yes in the future the land won't look as good as it did before, but does a falling tree make a sound when no one is there to hear it? Alot of resources are spent trying to "preserve" the environment, but it's a waste of resources doing so because sooner or later the tree everyone is trying to protect will be cut down anyway. I used to care about the natural environment but it's a waste of time now bothering, does it make any difference if a forest is cut down 10 years from now because everyone didn't care, or the forest being cut down in 50 years time because enviromentalists put up so much red tape that the loggers had to fight for every tree they cut down, slowly but surely they win in the end. Say your holding onto a weight attached to a pully over a cliff. The weight is too great for you to pull it up or keep it stable, it is slowly lowering while your getting friction burns on your hands. You know sooner or later that the weight will reach the ground, so why not just let go and save the friction burns on your hands, the weight will reach the ground faster, but really does it matter?, the end result will be the same.

[dbarberic]

Northern Tool sells a waste oil heater that cranks out 120,000 BTU!



http://tinyurl.com/chrwy

Some people mentioned lead and other harmful stuff in burning waste oil, but I can't imagine that the EPA would approve this thing if it let to much harmful stuff in the air.

[Guest]

I work in the environmental business. Specifically, I'm a stack tester. 15 years.

I've done emissions testing for just about every pollutant you can think of from every combustion process known to man.

The dirtiest process by far is cement manufacure. They burn coal, tires, hazwaste, and medical waste in the kilns because it does not make any difference in pollution rates.

Probably the second nastiest is the wood waste boilers at sawmills and paper plants. The metals emissions from these places is pretty amazing. Everything in the soil ends up in the bark--the boiler--the air. Lead, zinc, copper, chromium,.

Coal burning is also nasty. Everything on the periodic table is in coal. It then goes out the stack. This includes a lot of radionuclides that result in a HUGE amount of radiation released into the environment. (not to mention all of the mercury)

I've seen a lot of oil analyses for wear metals. If there was a lot of wear metals in waste oil, the engine would not be on the road for long. There are a lot of acids, oddball hydrocarbons, and tars that form in waste oil. That is why you have to change it.

Granted, recycling it is a better idea, but in the real world: This stuff is burned in hot-mix asphalt plants (big ol' nasty unburned hydrocarbon plume), sometimes made into chainsaw bar oil, and used as a fuel in boilers. THe EPA has identified on-site disposal (waste-oil heaters) as one of the best disposal options. There is currently a very limited market for waste oil as an industrial feedstock. It is a waste disposal problem.

If burned to completion, waste oil is a pretty sound fuel source. From engines subjected to average use, the metals emissions would be very low, less than wood. If the fire is going and the bed of coals is hot, complete combustion would result in little other thaan CO2 and H2O goung up the flue.

PCB (and other mixed-waste) contaminated oil would be very illegal to do this with. Fortunately, unless you go out with your DeWalt and a bucket to your nearest substation and steal the oil out of a big transformer, you will never encounter PCB. Given desperation, however, people will burn what they can.

Burning chlorine-containing substances, such as wire is very bad for you. Dioxins are produced hence. The guy in the Ukraine can tell you about this. Polyethelene and other non-chlorinated plastics are pretty safe to burn is complete combustion is assured.

Natural gas is the best hydrocarbon in terms of pollution relases. But, if you are inclined to think that this is " green energy" I would like to invite you to a well site, a gas plant, or a scrap pile full of radioactive pipe from a gas processing plant. You might have a different opinion then.

Best (only viable) option to reduce our impact on the environment is to consume less of everything.

[aflatoxin]

The above post is my handiwork. Not sure why it came though as Guest.

If someone wants to prove me wrong on this topic, I have over a million dollars worth of ait pollution test equipment at my disposal. I like single-malt scotch, and fine bourbon.

[shakespear1]

Wow, that is amazing !!! But now that I think about it , it makes sense. The plants pull a lot of stuff out of the ground and if you burn them it goes up in the air.

Thanks for this insight.

[basil_hayden]

Thanks afla, I'm in the biz too, but as a geologist I see it after it infiltrates the ground.

Nearly every waste oil underground storage tank site I've worked on in CT has elevated heavy metals, particularly lead, chromium, cadmium, as well as a smattering of PCBs. Maybe these are not concentrated as highly in used oil as in some of the sources you presented, I've heard of cement kiln issues before. Former manufactured gas plants have some nasty stuff also, including cyanide from one of the processes used.

I guess what it comes down to is that in the end, we burn everything, that is the acceptable disposal method, out of sight - out of mind. At one time it was pour it in the ground, but that came back and bit us with groundwater contamination.

Nothing quite like the PAHs in bourbon.