too much veggie oil

[Joe Wotypka]

i made my mercedes run on straight veggie oil. now i am building a 2k watt generator useing a volkswagen motor, i also made to run on veggie oil.it makes alot of power.i get 75 gallons oil a week. now i want to take the power i am making and tie it to the grid.ac to grid ?.where can i get the info. to do this.do i need a power inverter? i call around and can not get any info. thanks joe

[Joe Blake]

Hi Joe, and welcome to the group.

Without knowing where you live it's pretty hard to say, but normally your local power generator/distributor would be the best place to go. This sort of thing is usually subject to a lot of government regulation, safety concerns etc.

I understand your generator is producing alternating current (AC) (at 2 KW it sounds like it). An inverter is for turning low direct current (DC) into high alternating current so that wouldn't be what you'd need if you are producing AC, but depending on the voltage produced by your generator and whether it's the same as the grid voltage, you may need to have a transformer (either step up or step down) to feed into the local system. Say for example your generator produces 110 volts AC but your grid is 240 volts AC you'd need a step up.

http://www.voltage-converter-transformers.com/deluxe-step-up-down-transformer.html

Are you guaranteed 75 galls of veggie oil a week? Is this waste oil? If so you're very lucky.

Joe

PS Since your major question is about electricity, rather than combustion engines, it may get you more replies if you duplicate your post in a slightly more appropriate forum. (Although there doesn't seem to anything which fits your requirements exactly - maybe try solar electricity - people there will be au fait with connecting to grids.)

J

[Joe Wotypka]

my generator is making 220vac .i don,t think i could just plug it in the grid. and i get so much oil i cant store .i give alot away but it is hard to find some to take it .i use to get alot more but no place to put it .joe

[Alex Bennett]

You might try looking for this information under a completely different topic. There's a lot of solar documentation about how to feed power back into the grid. In fact, the necessary equipment you need might be exact same equipment you'd use in a photovoltaic scenario (well, as far as the electrical components go), so then the docs would be spot-on.

Just out of curiosity, do you have any pictures of this project?

Good Luck

[Brian McGowan]

I just saw this post for the first time.
Joe,
I don't believe you will be able to interface your generator with your grid power. It will be hard for you to sync and remain in sync with the power companies frequency if for no other reason than each time the amount of load changes your engine will slow or speed up momentarily as the load is applied or changed and have to catch back up.
Grid tied systems use an inverter which is capable of sensing the incoming power and matching it. Since it is electronic and not a physical moving mass that must speed up or slow down it has the freedom to do whatever is called for to match.
I do have another idea.
There is a thing called Micro Combined Heat and Power (CHP). It is currently only sold in the new england area I think. Basically what they do is attach a 1.2KW generator to a small internal combustion engine that runs on natural gas. The engine/generator is installed in the basement and during heating season it runs 24/7 providing a steady 1.2kW to the grid/house and at the same time they use the engine coolant to provide 28Kbtu/hour (IIRC) of heat to the house. If the heat required exceeds that amount an auxilliary furnace kicks in to make up the difference. They even scavage the heat from the exhaust.
What I have thought and not had a chance to do is this.
Make a diesel engine version of the above. (as you nearly have) Use the power around the house. Get a transfer switch so you can switch between the generator or the grid into part or all of your house. Use the heat from the engine coolant for helping to heat the house. (I'm guessing you live somewhere where you would need heat?) I spoke to one guy and he was going to use the power for the house, the coolant to heat a greenhouse and he was going to get a 30gal natural gas/propane water heater and run the exhaust into where the flame goes and put his veggie oil in the tank to get it hot and use it as his fuel.
Get yourself a Kill-A-Watt meter if you don't have one. You can use it to set the frequency on your generator. I got mine for about $25 shipping included.
Just some ideas.
Brian

[Stewart Corman]

Perhaps I am missing something basic here ...if you have an AC generator that runs effectively at nearly constant speed, you can run thru a full wave bridge to make DC, use a 460v cap to smooth it out, and then feed a grid tie inverter to make the grid connect.

Spending the $ for one of those inverters is another story and they would have to be power company approved ...IMHO they are prohibitively priced like $3K USD ...sometimes they show up on eBay

I agree with Brian that the most cost effective solution is to have a master disconnect on some of the house wiring. IMHO, I would use a contactor block or AC relay to trip the circuit on when the generator is running and the house wiring off.
Sometimes these are called motor reversing contactors, although I am looking at an AB 4 pole double throw relay in front of me that runs on 115v and is rated for 16amps@600v.

Forget about heating your house ..that requires 10KW min, heating domestic hot water is fine

OT- anyone here seriously using WVO to feed a furnace?

Stew Corman from sunny Endicott

[Brian McGowan]

Stewart,
No you are not missing anything. That is the first thought I had. Then the $$$ kicked in for me as it did for you and I figured he could use the power right now with minimal expense and effort in other ways and start burning that pile of veggie oil down quickly. There are also the losses of efficiency associated with using this equipment which is probably not important if you have an unlimmited supply of fuel. I also don't know what he pays for power and how much he uses to calculate if it's worth it from a financial standpoint.

I made disconnect box for use in my computer room. I put a relay in a 4 outlet box and made 2 AC plugs coming out. One plug goes to the wall and is wired to the normally closed contacts of the relay which then goes to the outlets. The other plug goes to the line I put in from my inverter and is wired to the normally open contacts and the relay coil so anytime I fire up the inverter it automatically energizes the coil and switches the contacts to the inverter power and routes that to the outlets. All my computer stuff is plugged into this box so when I have extra power I can just fire up the inverter and run my entire computer room off it.

For Joe I would do something similar. Get the correct contactor and hook the grid to the normally closed contacts and the generator to the normally open contacts and the coil. I would put a switch in line with the coil so he could get the generator started and up to speed and settled before the power was applied to the house. The switchover would likely happen so fast nothing would be affected. If the generator stopped for any reason the house would revert back to grid power.

He probably could drive a substaintially larger generator with that engine. I would still route the cooling water to a radiator in the house. No sense in wasting that. The most oil I ever burned for heat came out to about 5 gallons/day. Heating oil is 140,000BTU/gal so that at maybe 85% efficiency at best makes about 600,000BTU. The micro CHP arrangement I spoke of delivered a steady 28000BTU 24/7 for 672,000BTU. I could heat my house with that easily.

Yes I am very interested in heating my house with vegetable oil. I have a new oil burner that still has a year of warranty left on it so I can't mess with that yet. I saved the old burner for experimentation. I am a member of a yahoo group that deals specifically with alternate fuels in oil burning heaters but I have not been active in that yet. It is still pretty far down on the list.

That's all for now.
Brian

[Stewart Corman]

Brian,
You have the electric hookup as I would do it.
When the wind turbine kicks in, my plan is to intercept the hot water electric heat only, and disconnect the grid and then back and forth.

Back to WVO:
I have an existing HHO whole house furnace which I will not touch.
It has all the electronics for automated control, setback thermostats, etc if we leave the house for a few days.

An auxillary fireplace/furnace is in total manual operation, but is connected to the above distribution system by turning on forced air blower and baseboard hot water circ pump.... burned 6 full cords last year ...30 gal HHO

I am considering making one firedoor removeable, and installing a modified Beckett gun for WVO
The high presure nozzle/gear pump is removed, along with the blower, and an air atomizing nozzle with siphon ( a misnomer because the use a gravity feed ?) is run with 10psi@2 cuft/min which can be supplied with a small vane pump. A small Teco recirc pump supplies WVO at a fixed level and feeds a preheat tube wrapped around the flue.
If I can get a 0.5gal/hr flow rate, then a 8 gal holding tank will run continuosly
unless I manually shut it down ...get it running and walk away.
The added electric load should be around 125 watts, but the fuel is free.

I may post if I build a pressure fed filtering assembly using coffee filters mounted in PVC fittings, to get down to 20um.

Would like to start a new thread if others are using WVO in a furnace.

Stew Corman from sunny Endicott