Green Energy

What is the best vegetable oil to use in an oil lamp?

I have a handmade oil lamp that I bought in the mountains of North Carolina, and while it runs great on paraffin oil, I’d love to see how well it works using vegetable oil. Are there any vegetable oils that burn better than others? Thanks!

You can’t use vegetable oil in an “oil lamp.” Vegetable oil hydrocarbon chains are too long and complex to effectively burn. It can be used in diesel engines where a fine mist is mixed in with oxygen for combustion. This process is most effective when the glycerin is removed from the hydrocarbon. There simply is not enough surface area on a wick to effectively introduce oxygen and burning vegetable oil together.

In order for oil lamps to work, shorter and simpler hydrocarbons are used. Kerosene is 12-15 carbons of straight chain hydrocarbon. This lighter weight allows kerosene to partially vaporize, mix with oxygen, and combust near the wick. Vegetable oil comes in the form of triglycerides, or three fatty chains on a glycerin back. This means that the average molecule of oil weighs about 870 g/mol, not 210 g/mol for kerosene. As a result, it is much more difficult to get vegetable oil to vaporize off the wick for effective combustion. You’ll need the temperatures of a combustion engine.

As a result, vegetable oil is not used in lamps without major smoking and rapid fouling of the wick.

How It’s Made – Vegetable Oil

Tags: biodiesel, diesel, energy, green, svo, vegetable oil, vegetable oil car, vegetable oil fuel, vegetable oil substitute, vegetable oil vs canola oil

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 10th, 2011 at 6:07 am and is filed under Green Energy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.