ok, so i finally found a few frops of pure soy oil (wvo). about 20 gal a month. anyone ever mixed veg with hydrogenated oil? does it thin it out and lower the gel/solid point? i have a ton of hydrog available but im trying to reduce my pre-heat times and the health of the fuel system.

(this is for a heated veg tank, not bio)

thanks

Hydrogenated will raise gel point due to higher melting point than regular veg oil.;)

yes, but im trying to lower the gel point of the hydrog. will pure veg mixed in with heat lower the gel temp of the hydrog?

yes, but im trying to lower the gel point of the hydrog. will pure veg mixed in with heat lower the gel temp of the hydrog?

Yes and no. Each individual fatty acid ester is going to crystallize at the same temperature, no matter what. It's an oversimplification, but say you have 50% saturated fatty acid esters and 50% unsaturated fatty acid esters. When you reach the crystallization temperature of the saturated esters, 50% of your mix will crystallize. The other 50% will remain liquid, giving you sort of a slush. In reality it is much more complicated than this because you have fatty acids of varying carbon chain length, and that influences gel temp as well. But you get the point.

The trick in all this is to be sure that even though some of your mix is crystallizing at a given temp., enough remains liquid to keep the engine going until the fuel system gets warm enough to be above the cryst. temp. of all the esters. What will basically happen is your filter will partially plug with the crystals, but eventually they will melt and flow as the fuel warms up. You just don't want you filter to plug so much that you're starving for fuel.

To get the right mix, you'll just have to empirically try a few different combinations and cool them to see how each mix behaves at a given temperature. Then, based on the temps you're expecting to operate at, you can make a decision on how much "slush" in the fuel you can get away with. There're a lot of variables, so this won't be an easy process, but you should be able to find a mix that'll work.

On edit: I just reread your original post and realized you're not talking about bio. Everything I said above still holds, just ignore the ester part. You'll be dealing with glycerides not esters. But, if you're heating your tank anyway, you really don't need to care all that much about hydrogenated. It should still be liquid at ~120 degrees or so. All it means is you'll have to add a little more heat to your tank and wait a bit longer before switching. It is more of a pain in the filtering and settling part of the process than in the actual usage of it.

great info. thats pretty much what i concluded as well but wanted to be sure my thought process wasnt flawed. I think the filter will take the longest to heat up, but thats something im going to have to deal with until i either find a good non-hydrog source or until hydrog is banned from our state.