I've been heating exclusively with wood about for ever, One thing I've found that makes life much easier, Is having lots of barrels of dry saw dust,from cabinet shops not sawmills.I mix any waste oil I have in the sawdust.Than when I need to start a fire I take a scoop an put it on unfolded newspaper.I fold it an take to the wood stove an it makes building a fire almost as easy as turning a thermostat. The sawdust burns so hot It burns real clean.

Thanks, I guess, although this is a bit out of the scope of this forum.

It could be a useful technique for lighting off caboose stoves and maybe even steam locomotives, although kindling soaked in kerosene does a pretty good job...............

Not a problem here in Southern California, but for museums in colder climates, being able to heat a workshop cheaply can add more hours for restoration projects.

Ah ,come on It's on topic I'f you consider just about every old railroad shop is a superfund site. The old coster shop in knoxville when it was abandoned had so much diesel oil in the ground before they paved it the city had hundreds of dump trucks of dirt taken to south knoxville an dumped in sink holes which polluted the ground water for miles,The idiots anyway is what I'm getting at is the waste oil problem is solved with dry saw dust of course,It can also be a safety issue if not stored correctly.

Heck bring your waste oil to us at the Monticello Railway Museum, that's what we burn in SR #401!!

DBH

Good used oil is one thing it should be recycled. Is what I'm talking about is nasty stuff the landfill does not even want ,dirty grease, oil to contaminated to recycle.Solvents,etc .Lately , I've been into lard there's a lot of lard out there the recyclers don;t even want an it burn's hot like coal.

I recall in the dim recesses of what's left of my mind an article in an old DIY magazine - maybe Mother Earth News from 35-40 years back - that outlined the process and basic plans for building a waste oil fired heater suitable for a shop, garage, etc. It used a small electric fan for combustion air supply, had a tubular vaporizing burner, and either pumped or gravity fed fuel supply, with a metal drum or old gas cylinder or something like that as the radiant element. I reckon it could handle lard with some sort of means to keep it hot enough to flow, or anything else that has the BTUs and range of combustion temperature. If you also have a ready supply of organic combustables like sawdust, etc making the fuel outlined above makes good sense and requires less specialized a system to burn.

dave