This is one of our large heat exchangers, designed for vegetable oil conversions but equally at home with many other uses where a powerful heat exchanger is required.
We designed this heat exchanger specifically for use in vegetable oil conversions.  They are factory built to very high specification for automotive applications. TUV certified. Class ‘A’ rating for materials compliance with mineral diesel and vegetable oil and most of all exceptional fuel heating!! Max fuel and coolant pressure 50bar (725 psi). These things are the real deal, successfully running in thousands of converted vehicles and used by professionals in their vehicle conversions.

Why use this heat exchanger?
This is our high performance heat exchanger for large vehicles such as lorries, vans, campers, 4x4s and pickups. It has an array of baffles between each plate ensuring that the surface area in contact with the fluids is HUGE and the baffles induce turbulence to ensure the heat is mixed throughout the oil. There are 7 layers for fuel and 7 for coolant and within each layer there are hundreds of gaps ensuring that there is negligible restriction to the fuel or coolant flow and the heat transfer is massive. This is equivalent to more than 25 metres of hose in hose and far superior to the alternatives eg. glow plug heaters, metal blocks sold as heat exchangers or homemade pipe based hose in hose contraptions. This performs far better than the stainless steel heat exchangers from combi boilers that are also used for vegoil conversions.

All you need to do to install this unit is tee into the coolant lines running to the internal cab heater matrix and run a loop of 16mm coolant hose to the heat exchanger. Then re-route the vegoil fuel supply line through the heat exchanger --> super hot fuel (~80°C depending on coolant temp). We carry stock of all necessary heater hose, fuel hose, connectors and hose clips, should these be needed. See here for our installation guide http://www.biotuning.co.uk/downloads/HeatExchangerInstructions.pdf

Provided that you use less than 2,500 litres per year you can simply pour vegetable oil straight into the fuel tank of your diesel without the need to pay tax!

So, if you collect used cooking oil and filter it yourself (see our other items and the plans on our website) you could be saving over £3000 per year!

So why do you need a heat exchanger?
The oil needs to be thinned to a viscocity close to that of diesel. Heating the oil to around 80°C will allow the oil to burn more efficiently preventing the engine and injectors coking and the injector pump from breaking.

What about glow plug heaters?
Firstly, despite what you are told, you are starting and running on cold oil if you use a glow plug heater since the injector pump, injector pipes and engine block are big metal heat sinks which sap all the heat provided to the oil until they themselves are warm. So if you are running on oil when the vehicle is cold, you will be coking your injectors and damaging the injector pump and worse of all, you may be seriously damaging your engine as a result of engine oil polymerisation - whereby the engine oil soldifies and the engine goes bang. The only way to avoid these issues is to fit a proper single tank system which includes upgraded injectors, modified timing, longer glow plugs, heated fuel filter among other engine modifications.

When the engine is up to temperature, the oil is not cooled by the fuel components and therefore the heat in the oil will be retained right till the point it reaches the injectors. It is then burned cleanly and efficiently - the pump is not damaged and there is no coking and no polymerisation.

Once the engine is warm there is unlimited heat which is regulated at the optimum temperature, so why bother straining the battery with a set of glow plugs when you can get so much more heat from the coolant system. There simply is no need. Furthermore, a glow plug heater requires electrical control and if the plugs are in direct contact with the oil they may burn the oil causing burnt flakes to damage the injectors.

The twin-tank system has shown to be the most reliable conversion method
Using a second tank and a switching fuel valve to select diesel when the vehicle is cold and vegoil when the car is warm has shown to be the most reliable method of converting a diesel to run on neat vegoil. Even vehicles fitted with fragile Lucas pumps can reliably run with this method. We have a wealth of details and all of the parts required on our website.