Biodiesel Heat Exchanger

Biodiesel can be cheaper than fossil fuel and also a lot cleaner. But during the cold period it may lose some of its fluidness, therefore it is advisable to fit a biodiesel heat exchanger to reduce viscosity, improve fuel consumption and overall fuel performance. To put it simply, a heat exchanger is a device that transfers heat from one medium to another.

There are several types of biofuel heat exchangers: brazed plate, hose in hose, hose on hose and glow plug heaters, to name but a few. The trend is for heat exchangers to become smaller and more efficient. This appears to be the case of a biofuel heat exchanger profiled in the Australian website vegiecars.com, dedicated to cars running on vegetable, waste oil. The product in question is a Stainless Steel plate exchanger that uses a "coolant to heat the fuel prior to the injection pump". It has small ripples up and down each plate in order to create more surface area for the fuel to travel over. It looks small (although no dimensions are provided) and very neat.

Biotuning, in the UK, offers two types of biodiesel heat exchangers, one of which also bets on miniaturization. They are called Compact and High Performance. The former consists of an array of baffles between each plate ensuring that the surface area in contact with the fluids is big and inducing turbulence to ensure the heat is mixed through the oil. The latter bucks the trend towards smallness: it is a large, aluminium unit capable of delivering up to 18,000 Watts of heat, which makes it more suitable for larger vehicles with greater fuel consumption (7 to 28mpg).

For the DIY-inclined, it is possible to build your own biodiesel heat exchanger. With very little research, it is easy to find instructions on how to build a biodiesel heat exchanger, although it's crucial to make sure that the final product works properly.