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Title: How to find the oil content in glow fuel Post by: gauravag on November 19, 2009, 04:31:06 PM Guys,
I have a few gallons of fuel that was made last year and though stored properly has no indication on how much lubricant it contains. Is there any way to find this out ? The only idea that comes to mind is to take 10 ml in a test tube and burn it to see how much oil remains. I know its dangerous, but is there any other way ? BTW i know it contains no nitro. -Gaurav Title: Re: How to find the oil content in glow fuel Post by: izmile on November 19, 2009, 04:55:35 PM I guess it can be done by measuring the specific density of the pure methanol vs your mixed fuel. You might need a device to measure the specific density though. A testube might be used for this as well with tolerable inaccuracies.
-Ismail Title: Re: How to find the oil content in glow fuel Post by: RotorZone on November 19, 2009, 04:57:17 PM Just let the methanol evaporate from the test tube ? Burning will burn oil too.
Title: Re: How to find the oil content in glow fuel Post by: gauravag on November 19, 2009, 05:37:10 PM I thought about evaporating. But then i thought it would pull a lot of moisture from the air, plus not all methonol would really evaporate.
I did a little experiment and found it. Did with extreme caution. Do not advise anyone else to repeat this unless they know what they are doing. I put 100 ml fuel in a Borosil beaker ( of 500 ml capacity ) . Then ignited the solution with a match. The fuel burned for around 30 minutes with a beautiful blue flame. It was not a big fire rather a small flame on the top of the beaker. Seemed to be a nice cycle, as the methanol evaporated it burnt at the rim of the beaker, which generated heat to evaporate more of methnol. After the flame burnt out, i measured the oil ( while hot ) , as it was very fluid. Found out it contained 23% of oil. It contains a Klotz-200 synth + castor blend. Will now mix enough methnol to bring the % to 18% and then will use in my Saito. Because Klotz is expensive, i want to salvage this fuel. Title: Re: How to find the oil content in glow fuel Post by: izmile on November 19, 2009, 06:30:17 PM With a long neck beaker you would have got a nice RRRR-RR-RR-RR sound with flame on its mouth. Anyway, if anyone is trying this out, I would suggest to have the beaker immersed in a bath of water so that it does not explode when its lighted.
-Ismail Title: Re: How to find the oil content in glow fuel Post by: avijit17basu on November 19, 2009, 07:33:03 PM Methanol is soluble in water while castor oil is not.
Must be easy to measure a fixed volume of fuel and the wash is carefully with plenty of water and see how much oil remains. avijit |