I finally photographed the home-brew Diesel setup I built:
The waste veggie oil goes in the top barrel. The sawed-in-half gas can acts as a funnel. The oil comes to me via the white 5 gallon buckets on the left, so they don’t pour into 2″ holes without a funnel. The gas can sits very well in the filler bung, so I won’t spill… too much. The top barrel has a bung in the side, through which I have a 3/4″ ID gasoline hose, which goes through a stop-valve, to a 15-30 micron filter, through another stop-valve, through a 5-15 micron filter, through the final stop-valve to the bottom barrel. The bottom barrel is equipped with a nice 10 gallons per minute hand pump. The whole setup is airtight, and is kept from freeze damage (thankfully only a slight possibility here in the Pacific Northwest) with one of those pipe-warming cords that winds its way from the top to the bottom. You will note the bottom barrel has a blanket around it for extra insulation. If we get a significant cold snap I’ll have to supplement the heat with a light bulb or something.
This whole section of the barn was built by the previous owner specifically to store Diesel fuel. The shelf there had four large fuel storage tanks on it when we first viewed the house. The guy owned a logging company and the barn was his workshop for the trucks and equipment. The floor below it is not on the concrete slab, but it is filled with gravel and oil-absorbent stuff. Pretty cool.
I only have about 5 gallons in the upper tank right now. It should start flowing on its own via gravity once I have about 20 gallons in the upper tank. Running the hand pump will also provide suction back through the system to boost the filtering. Can’t wait to get it running at capacity.