Bio diesel gone bad

Big Will

Mrs customer talks to her fuel company about converting her furnace and water heater to bio diesel. They are more than happy to oblige. She buys a cartridge in line filter to replace the general filter. The fuel company fills the tank with bio diesel. They change the nozzles in the burners to higher gph. This was because the bio diesel is thicker. After about a year of problems with the two appliances she decides to convert back to fuel oil. They drain the tank and refill with normal oil. The water heater still wont work and the furnace burner cycles on flame failure all the time.

Enter Hanson heating and air. We get a service call for the house no heat. I change the nozzle and the ignitor on the water heater and get it to burn well again. She is talking about what has gone on over the last year and asks what went wrong. Now the thing about oil burners around here is they are rare. Probably 1 in 5000 homes have it in the three counties I work in. I have learned what I know on the wall and from the books found on line. All I can say is combustion analyzers are a God sent. I would have no idea if I did the right thing with out one. Back to the problem what did go wrong? It sounds off to me to change the nozzles like that because that would change the fire rate. The tank is under the house and the house is surrounded by redwoods so it is cold all year. I was thinking the bio diesel needed to be heated to keep the consistency right. They were using 50% blend which seems kinda high. I remember a thread that went by about this that put 15% at the highest you could go with current burners. Bio diesel is still a bit of a novelty but their must be someone else working with it what has to change to make it right?

[Deleted User]

Here you go.

1. UL has NOT yet approved the use of the current ASTM Standard bio blends in oil burners.
2. Those burner manufacturers who have jumped the shark only approve B5 in their pieces. Most of the equipment has been tested for B5.
3. The fed'l gummint uses B20. Problems w/ above ground tanks & fuel lines. Turns to jello around 40*. Can't imagine using a B50 blend w/ outside tank.
4. High viscosity fuel should be compensated for w/ a smaller nozzle @ higher pump pressure to decrease droplet size. Bigger droplets, from high viscosity fuel, increase input above nozzle rating.
5. Wonder what the insurance folks would do if there was an incident concerning an oil fired appliance burning non-UL Approved fuel?