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zeitfest
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Joined: 31/07/2019
Location: Australia
Posts: 482

Posted: 12:01am 10 Sep 2019

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I can just remember the kero fridge my grandparents used, and as a 6-yo grandson "helping" by rotating the dial to max, thereby freezing the contents (!) ..

I am guessing, that biodiesel can be used instead of kero in most cases (?) so a "kero" fridge could probably run using biodiesel ? Same for kero heaters...at least a smell of chips would be better than the kero pong.

Davo99
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Joined: 03/06/2019
Location: Australia
Posts: 1578

Posted: 12:14pm 10 Sep 2019

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I remember my grandfather with a Kero Fridge as well. Thing I remember about it is the flame would go out all the time and grandad would be forever relighting the thing.

I also remember him replacing it with a 3 way, Gas, 240 and 12V. That one was much better but I do remember that one going out once and grandad relighting it and there was a hell of a bang. No damage or injury other than to grandads eyebrows but a number of people came rushing over from other vans.

Mate bought one when we used to go camping.
Worked will on gas and 240 but pretty useless on 12V.

Not sure about Bio instead of kero. I know myself and others tried WVO and that was a non starter. Just burned the crap out of the wicks and that was it. In any case you could do a Bio/ Kero blend. don't know how much you'd need, depend what the bio was made from in the first place and what the gel point was.

Mate and I would have made probably 30K litres + back in the day. Used to do it in 1000L batches. The key to our production was actualy heating and drying the oil. I made ( many) burners that could easily BOIL 200L of oil in 17 Min. After we boiled the oil dry, I set up a car heater core with the fan and we'd run the oil though that varying the flow to get a 60O output so we could pump it into the reactor to process. We'd cook at 50 but time we got the tank filled it had lost some temp so that was what we aimed for.
Best lot we ever did was 3000L in one weekend. We often did 2000L in one weekend.

We used lard, duck fat, Coconut oil, Used oil, new oil, Corn, canola, Olive, sunflower... Every oil out there and LOADS of mixes we got from various places and blended together.

What the base stock is has an effect on the character of the Bio you get.
New oil will produce Bio that is really thin, can be almost clear and can go down to minus 5 or better.

Used lard can gell at 10oC even with complete conversion and surplus catalyst. I would think this may give trouble in a wicked type burner.

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