We are decommisioning a large piece of electrical equipment soon. I will have free access to about 250 gallons of transformer oil.

Diala Oil AX inhibited electrical insulating oil

"contains highly refined petroleum oils"

So I know it isn't the peanut oil variety. It is also not the old toxic oil because this piece of equipment was put into service new in 2007.

I know I can burn it in my 7.3 diluted with diesel. I figure at a 50/50 mix I can cut my fuel cost in half for the most of the summer.

Who here is doing this already and would like to share some insight? I am really looking for real world experience as this will be my first major venture into alternative fuel.

 

Welcome to the Alt fuel forum! I've been making bio for almost 10 years now, but do have some experience with transformer oil. We received about a hundred gallons of transformer oil from the local elect co-op last year, and it was some of the nicest oil I've seen. I mixed it 50/50 with my bio and didn't have any problems at all....

 

Thanks. Reps sent.

Anyone else?

 

Does anyone else want to chime in?

 

I wouldn't handle the oil until it has been tested for PCPs.

My local transformer decommissioning company gets contaminated oil all the time. Some even as high as 50k parts per million which is very dangerous. After talking to them, I won't use transformer oil unless it has been tested.

Transformer oil is currently off my radar. I turned down several hundred gallons a few months ago..

 

Do you know if that source still has it? I'd love to pick that up if possible....

 

Since the equip. was put into service in 2007, I'd run that with no reservations. Just clean it really well (filters, centrifuge, etc.) and away you go. If you want to run it straight, you could also mix it with regular unleaded gas and get away with using less diesel, i.e. 80% transformer oil, 20% regular gas, 0% diesel.

 

They wouldn't sell me any. They normally sell it by the tanker load.

 

Thomabb,
Depending on where you're located, I'll even come out and centrifuge it for you if you'll trade me a little bit of oil in return....

 

I thought you said you turned it down? I'm not tracking...

And depending on the price of a full load, I might still be interested.

 

I have my own laboratory

 

I'm in western PA, north of Pittsburgh. I haven't taken possession of the oil yet. The project keeps getting bumped back.

 

I'm in Buffalo so about 3.5 hrs away. I could get down there early one Sat, centrifuge it for a solid 8-10 passes, and be back on the road by Sunday morning....

 

Why centerfuge..?..no carbon particals,or engine chemicals,,blend, and fillter with 10 micron fillter as you put it in the rig..

 

What's the status on the oil, were you able to get it yet?