WVO in a sailboat???

[mackconsult]

Any one done a WVO (Waste Vegetable Oil) kit into their sailboat?

I just drove 160 miles on WVO!!! I started this installation back in November and just getting to the point were I can say its rock solid.

I am thinking this is something I would do when I go cruising. On a sailboat it would work perfect. Constant running velocities are an easy WVO implementation.

Any one done it???? I am thinking solar panels and a good main/gen set that would be WVO enabled. You get them up to temperature on diesel then switch them over. Or are diesel prices outside of the US so low that it wouldn't be worth it??

Click on the WVO tag on my website for more information.

[klem]

I see that you put a very good kit in your sprinter.

While I have not done WVO in a boat (I have only run bio in boats) it seems to me that there are a few things that are different for boats that make it less appealing. The first one is from a cost perspective. WVO systems are expensive since the good kits would probably run ~$2000 for parts alone and if you don't get a good kit, you will definitely pay for it down the line. This probably represents something like 700 gallons of fuel that you would have to burn to pay for the system. With the engines that people use in their boats that are burning ~.5-.75 gallons/hr, this is on the order of 1000-1500hours of run time to pay for it. Another thing is it would be unfortunate to clog a filter and need to change it. You could get around this by making sure that all your filters were before the valve and switching back to diesel if the pressure starts to go up. The other question that I would have has to do with how you are going to get the oil and prefilter. If you never sail very far from home, it wouldn't be a big deal to do the prefiltering at home and then drive the fuel down to the boat. Prefiltering setups take up a lot of room and are really messy so I can't imagine having one aboard. Not to mention lugging fuel back from restaurants on a cruise when you don't have a car.

I agree that there are several appealing things about the marine application. Probably the most appealing is how long the engine runs at a time, you could get stuff up to temp, switch over and not waste a lot of diesel purging all the time.

My own reaction is that it would be a big hassle on a sailboat, especially if you have a mooring not a slip.

I am driving from NH to NC tomorrow and the veggie tank has a full 85 gallons in it which should at least get us there.

[Barquito]

I think a boat in our club has done the conversion (small lake sailing). Smells like french fries every time it goes by!

[ksetchfield]

Hey guys,

Glad you started this thread. I've been running on waste vegetable oil for years (in my cars). Now that I'm looking at a sailboat with a diesel motor in it, I can't help but consider converting it to run on WVO also.

Many people look at a WVO conversion with a time-to-cost-equilization perspective. By that I mean that they do the math to find out how long it would take to recoup their investment based on the cost savings of the cheaper (or free) fuel.

That's a valid way to look at it for sure. However, there are plenty of other ways to look at it also. Idealists who sail partly because they don't want to live a heavy carbon-based life hate to have to turn on the engine and use fossil fuels at all. I know of people who install oars on their sailboats for this reason. WASTE vegetable oil is basically carbon neutral, and I often get it free from pizza joints and Chinese restaurants. Gotta love that when Diesel is over $3.00 per gallon.

It's much more financially worth while for me to use WVO in my cars since I often drive a thousand miles in a month. How many hours do you use your boat's diesel engine though?

So, if I get this boat that I'm interested in, I'll be considering converting the engine. Based on the two car conversions I've done so far, I know that it won't cost $1,500 as quoted above. One can do a proper installation himself for probably $500 to $800. I wouldn't want to buy a kit anyway, as they are not custom designed for the marine application. Better to design and implement the system myself.

For the marine environment, my main concern would be having enough space in the engine compartment for the added hoses and valves!

I've also built a biodiesel reactor (appleseed type), and I've made biodiesel instead of using waste vegetable oil. You can either convert the engine to use straight oil or convert the oil to be used in an unconverted diesel engine. Making biodiesel is way more labor intensive than using straight vegetable oil, but if you have a good source of pre-made WASTE-VEGETABLE OIL SOURCED biodiesel, then that's the easiest by far. Then you can go carbon neutral with your sailboat without having to convert the engine.

If you get biodiesel that's made from newly harvested vegetable oil that was grown specifically to make biodeisel then the carbon neutrality no longer exists as it uses way more energy to create biodiesel from new vegetable oil (seed to fuel) than it does to make it from waste vegetable oil (dumpster to fuel). Good luck finding it though. Around here we can get it in 5-gallon fuel cans at various mini-marts. If you get biodiesel at the pump then your 90% likely to be buying the bad new vegetable oil sourced biodiesel. DONT BUY IT!

Still, to do it, I would think you'd do it for idealist reasons, not financial ones. I hate using fossil fuel and contributing directly and personally to global warming. I'm partly looking to cruise for this reason.

Kristopher Sprockett

[redhead78]

I think we are doing more than our part with the green sh*t just by sailing our boats. With the amount of diesel I use whan you compare ,to say a 38' Searay, well guess what, we are all AL Gores....Ugh did I just say that.....AS far as putting that crap in my new engine, you'll have to shoot me first. Diesels are hinky enough with just dirt and air.....I think I 'll stick with the dirty diesel....Just me Red