I noticed this evening that the latest news and information posting on the Flying Yankee website mentions the possibility that the replacement power plant they intend to install may be specified for the use of BioDiesel fuel.

They also indicate they will auction off some more parts of the Winton 201A at the next Flying Yankee gala banquet event.

http://www.flyingyankee.com

Why are they auctioning off parts of the original engine? Wouldn't Preservation standards suggest keeping it as intact as possible for future reference (or even installation). Actually, I've not understood all the modifications they deem "necessary" to make it able to run reliably, it seems more like a facade restoration, or maybe a "resto-rod" in today's automotive hobby reference.
S'
David D.

And those are excellent questions David, a lot of others wonder too.....

They have announced a number of times that they are going to reassemble the Winton as an "educational" exhibit, they supposedly have all the parts of the engine (less the ones they have auctioned), and it would be an interesting and useful display for fundraising events, so why hasn't that been done yet?

MX

While we are on the subject of BioDiesel, I’ll throw this out as a “what if” question. Say you already had a steam locomotive converted to burn fuel oil and, you had a very abundant supply of used frying oil. I think you know were I’m going with this; we could market it as “GREEN STEAM”. If you could make it run with a clean stack all the time you could have turned one dirtiest locomotives into the cleanest. Or maybe I’m just up pasted my bed time, or dreaming early. I’ll let you pick.

In mock seriousness...........

I believe that the relative BTU value of used frying oil is pretty darned bad by comparison to petro-based fuels. I seem to recall a converted VW Eurovan running with a re-tooled modern VW diesel engine; I think the mileage on french fry oil was 12-14 mpg as opposed to 45-ish for petro-diesel in an unconverted VW diesel engine in the same application. Therefore, the only plus was taking for "free" used cooking oil that is theoretically "thrown out" but is actually rendered for industrial uses instead.

Now, of course, if you stopped to refuel at every fast food joint, you wouldn't make very good time, either.............

I have it from a very good source that Clark's New Hampshire used french fry oil for steam lubricator oil in the past, when regular steam oil supplies were difficult.

I was once saddled with several gallons of used fry oil being dumped into a locomotive fuel tank, complete with chicken bones and all. I wasn't thrilled, there were occsasional problems, and was very pleased when it finished running through.

This isn't to suggest that with some processing it couldn't be useful - much like letting the watery stuff that comes from Jiffy Lube settle out of the waste oil before trying to burn it.

Has anybody worked this out yet?

dave

I talked with a friend a while ago about converting used vegetable oil to a "diesel" fuel oil. If memory serves, basically, you heat up a mixture of veg. oil and lye in a drum over a small fire to just noth of 110 deg. and then the lye refines the oil through titration and you are left with fuel oil and a bunch of "soap". Fifty gallons of used oil yields 40 or so gallons of fuel. The cost worked out to less than a dollar per gallon or something like that. I can find out more about this if you want - send me a PM.

I used to work for a Diesel fuel injection OEM in R&D and their position is a very low percentage of vegetable oil mixed in with conventional Diesel as vegetable oil contains a far amount of moisture which is not healthy for a fuel system that uses steel parts with clearances in the millions of an inch range. Maybe the titration process addresses that concern - I don't know.

Hi All
I have been on a Group that discusses Waste Vegetable Oil (WVO) for an alternate fuel for running Diesel engines of all types. There are two ways of doing it.
1st: Use a chemical process to remove the Glycerin from it and this actually produces what is called BioDiesel. It has the same properties that Diesel has. The fuel efficency is a bit less but not much.

2nd: Using WVO as it is. This is the simplest and cheapest way of doing it. There are severel Cavets though. You do have to filter it very good getting as many of the impurities out of it as you can. This is the most Important part. Filtration...
Next to run it pure you have to heat it up to around 180 degrees F so it won't clog up the Injectors of a diesel engine.
The fuel Efficency of running pure WVO is almost that of Diesel. About 3 to 5 mpg different.
And as for a steam engine it probably isnt any worse than using #6 Fuel oil.
BTW, If yoiu get caught behind a WVO diesel in a traffic Jam you will not smell cooking French Fries unless you are next to a fast food restaurant.

Last but not least, WVO is Enviromentally friendly.
Andrew Martin

I believe that #6 Fuel oil has an average of 155,500 BTU/gal (source: DOE) and from what I can gather on the web, WVO is roughly 110,000 BTU/gal. Kerosene, #1, and #2 fuel oil have between 130,000 BTU/gal and 140,000 BTU/gal. That probably explains the loss in mileage for a diesel switching to straight WVO.
I can assure you that a fireman can tell the difference in weight of the oil and its BTU (which go hand in hand).

Respectfully,
Sully

You can hear and feel the difference in fuel heat values in diesels, too. A diesel engine definitely behaves differently between #1 diesel, #2 diesel and JP fuel. Of course a few years ago there was a lot of talk about running diesels on heavy fuel because it was cheaper. That talk led to the inevitable result, a price increase on heavy fuel, and few of the diesel operators continued to run on it.

It is going to be interesting to see what the Flying Yankee Restoration Group comes up with as a replacement engine and transmission package for the train. Looking through the newsletters on the website gives the impression that they are hopeful of donations of the equipment, I wonder if one of the diesel manufacturers has deep enough pockets to want to tackle this one.

Isn't the Mt. Washington Cog Railway still planning on a bio-oil firing test?

Rob