Waste vegetable oil/sawdust "logs" in a woodstove?

[Badfish740]

I am in the process of converting my Ford F-350 Powerstroke to run on waste vegetable oil (WVO) and the leftovers of the filtering process are what is commonly referred to as the "dregs" which is hydrogenated (crisco-like) oils, fats, crumbs from the fryer, etc... Many folks I've talked to make use of the stuff by mixing it with sawdust in 1/2 gallon paper milk cartons to form a "log" which they then burn in the stove. The question I have is that I've not heard much about what this might do to the chimney. As you can imagine, this stuff burns quite hot, but could it form dangerous deposits in the chimney?

 

[Highbeam]

Certainly would void your warranty. If the fuel is volatile enough to burn quite hot then it will be like fatwood where you need to choke down the draft to prevent a meltdown which makes a lazy orange flame which is sooty as heck. Messy in the stove and messy in the chimney.

 

[fossil]

I'm with highbeam...doesn't sound like anything I'd burn in my stove without seeing some testing data. I'll stick with good old regular wood. Rick

 

[Jags]

Yep, I'm gonna back up HighBeam and Fossil. I wouldn't do it, and it would DEFINITELY void any warranty. Theres something about throwing sawdust laid-en muck into a wood stove that just doesn't sound right. Stick to the proper stove chow and you will have a happy and healthy heater.

 

[flyingcow]

growing up we used to put the bacon fat on top of the kindling when starting a fire. Works incredibly well, but is a short lived fire. Does the trick, but in that type of logs, does sound like it would get too hot. Might make the neighbors get the munchies. :coolsmile:

 

[Nofossil]

I'm quite confident that in at least small amounts, you could burn them in a gasifier with no problems at all. You want to avoid getting too much surface area going all at once, but otherwise the high temperatures, long combustion path, and secondary air would make for complete and clean combustion.