David2452
Well-Known Member
I doubt any evaporator heater could (in any practical sense) be developed to run on straight veg oil, the thing relies on initial evaporation and the pin will start up on diesel with a flash point of say 65⁰C, even then if there is any carbon masking of the pin we all know the problems that ensue. Veg oil has a flash point of over 300⁰C so the initial provision required to spark it up would be complex and power hungry. Add to that the viscosity issues making it very difficult to even get it to the burner in the first place and it makes the thought of even developing from scratch a complete non starter. A PJ heater might be a better candidate but even then it would require some serious modification. Evaporator heaters in general are a compromise and have real operational drawbacks even on diesel but are really the only game in town, the sooner somebody comes up with a small PJ heater the better, the smallest available at the moment are 13 & 16kw and physically about three times the size of a 5kw evaporator.