On my buddy's on-board system, the WVO is pumped to a 55-gallon tank where the Dieselcraft is also installed. A 1/2 inch aluminum coil (maybe 6 coils) has coolant flow in it.

At normal driving speed and temps, the 55-gallon WVO reaches over 140F after about 2 hours of driving. This is sufficient to dewater WVO after a few passes using flash evaporation or centrifugal dewatering.

He uses a teel gear pump powered by a 1/2 HP AC motor. The gear pump flows about 1.5 GPM. The motor is powered by a 3000 watt on-board. inverter. So far he has processed over 300 gallons on the road. The setup looks good and the system is a sealed system so you don't get steam or splashing. However, the gear pump is noisy.

At one point, he experimented with exhaust heating. He put a coil wrapped around the exhaust. Worked good and heated the WVO really good. However, he abandoned the idea since coolant heat is found to be sufficient for his long trips. With exhaust heat supplement, the 55-gallon tank is at over 180F in about 45 minutes. With this setup, he can process way more than what he would require on his coast to coast trips.

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The setup looks good and the system is a sealed system so you don't get steam or splashing. However, the gear pump is noisy.

If the system is sealed where does the water/water vapor go ?

ReM

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Originally posted by ReM:

quote:

The setup looks good and the system is a sealed system so you don't get steam or splashing. However, the gear pump is noisy.

If the system is sealed where does the water/water vapor go ?

ReM

Cross-flow blower setup.

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Originally posted by ReM:
If the system is sealed where does the water/water vapor go ?

If you catch the output at shutdown, thats where the water is, and thats the most important thing many people don't do.

Nice one Vegnoob! Sounds like a cool system your bud has.

Tuned - an inverter to a 1/2 HP (or whatever is needed for the OC-50), sounds like a easier idea than the belt driven pump. Also, you then don't have to route the oil to the front of the car and back to the barrel.

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Originally posted by SunWizard:

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Originally posted by ReM:
If the system is sealed where does the water/water vapor go ?

If you catch the output at shutdown, thats where the water is, and thats the most important thing many people don't do.

My experience with a closed system does not agree with this. I catch the output at shut down with a 3-way valve, and without cross flow of air in the top of a water heater, my oil does not pass the hot pan test when checking for water. I achieve air flow above the oil using a simple aquarium air pump. W/O air pump, fails hot pan test every time; with air pump, passes hot pan test every time. Just my experience.

Waylan

Sun about how hot does your inline heating elements get in your CF set up? Also what temprature is you oil prior to this final pass over the inline heating elements.

Just tryin to determin how much temp/energy is needed to move oil temps upward to 160F when it's traveling at 1g/min. Would think it must be a very significant amount of heat. 300F maybe when trying to jump ambient oil to 160F on one pass?

When I have both inline elements on it raises the temp by 20F at 1gpm. They total 2.25kw = 7681 btu.

A 26plate FPHE is 90,000 btu so will raise it by plenty, to around 160F (if your coolant is 180F) on the first pass if this is what you are trying to figure out.

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Originally posted by SunWizard:
...A 26plate FPHE is 90,000 btu so will raise it by plenty, to around 160F (if your coolant is 180F) on the first pass if this is what you are trying to figure out.

Yep that was what I was building up to. Thanks for the info. Did not think it heated that well. Good info to know! I'll update my earlier post so not to pass on missinformation.

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Originally posted by walexa07:
My experience with a closed system does not agree with this. I catch the output at shut down with a 3-way valve, and without cross flow of air in the top of a water heater, my oil does not pass the hot pan test when checking for water. I achieve air flow above the oil using a simple aquarium air pump. W/O air pump, fails hot pan test every time; with air pump, passes hot pan test every time. Just my experience.

That agrees with my experience. When there is lots of water, airflow speeds up the dewatering as I have said many times in this thread.

I was only answering his question about how a closed CF rig works. There is collected water in the contents of the CF at shutdown, and you catch it. If you didn't, you would fail the pan test even worse.

12 volt electric pump -- I suspect an engine -driven pump would be a LOT of hassle, long, expensive, high pressure hydraulic hose, and constantly changing flow rates due to changing RPM's. Still like the 12 volt Shurflo pump approach, to get the required flow for the larger centrifuge you only need to run more than one pump in paralell, two 3 G/M water-rated 12 volt pumps in paralell should move 2 G/M of hot oil, flow and pressure would be constant whether parked or driving, also only nice short plumbing needed.

These pumps do make a bit of a loud "humm" making this much pressure but not so loud that they can't be made acceptable by locating the pumps outside the personnel area.

Could also turn a normal hydraulic gear pump using one or more scooter motors powered on 12 volts, if you need more power use two scooter motors, both belt driving the pump, one belt around 3 pullies (two scooter motors powered from 12 volts could create up to a total to 1/3 HP and drawing no more than 20 amps).

The pump noise will also be competing with an 8-cyl turbo diesel engine, and I intend to make a "gas closet" to house everything, vent oily steam outside, and minimize noise if necessary.

I suppose the DC pumps are more appropriate than the belt pump, especially since drawing the WVO from the source with a belt pump is tricky at best. I don't see the benefit to a power inverter whose inefficiency will only drain the battery/engine more, not to mention the extra cost. A second battery isn't a bad idea anyway.

So to summarize, a coolant line is added to flow through a 26+ plate FPHE, WVO is mesh filtered as it's pumped, on the road it should take about an hour to bring oil up to temp, after that the CF processes approx 27 GPH (based on 4 passes) while the bus burns about 5 GPH (based on 15MPG and 75MPH).

Sounds good to me. Have I got it right?

No hour to bring it up to temp. Your VO will be hot enough the first time through the FPHE to send right to the CF if your coolant is hot.

Really? Well in that case I don't need the OC-50 and the OC-20 and one pump will be fine.

However, I don't want to take too long pumping 40+ gal of WVO around between the source, processing tank, and fuel tank. Is there a good 12VDC pump for higher flow at lower pressures? Preferably it could still handle 160F.

As some folks have found out, that the Dieselcraft rotor appears to be a weak part of the system. Overpressurizing the rotor will cause the top part to cave in against the screw on top. This will allow the rotor to move up causing a leak at the o-rings. This will of course prevent you from maintaining the 90 psi of required pressure.

Well, when my pressure relief valve malfunctioned, I overpressurized the rotor and it caved in allowing the leak. Well, I could spend $60 to buy a new rotor and have the same overpressurization weakness again, or spend $5 to implement the fix I devised.

Use a washer to hold down the rotor!!! Find a washer with an internal diameter that is just slightly larger than the rotor shaft and with an outer diameter that is slightly bigger than the caved-in part of the rotor. Simply center that on the top of the rotor and JB-weld it. Carefully trim out the excess JB-Weld to try to maintain the balance as much as possible. I have found that even if you do not get the balance exactly balanced, it still works good.

Using this franken-rotor, I have processed over 200 gallons successfully. In fact, it is even more effective now. With the washer preventing a cave in of the rotor, I have found that I can maintain a much higher pressure. I have run the rotor at over 150 psi for superenergized spinning and very effective cleaning. I have found almost all the grit is removed after 2 passes. And since the squirt velocity is significantly faster, dewatering is also greatly improved.



So, implement this fix on your busted rotor. If you do not believe me, let me know and I will buy the busted rotor from you. I can fix it and resell it back as an improved rotor.

I put a washer on the top of my bent rotor about a year ago, and mentioned it on pages 35, 64, 75, and 99 and others. It works great and allows higher pressures. It doesn't need to be JB welded if you put an o-ring under the washer.

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Originally posted by Tuned:
Is there a good 12VDC pump for higher flow at lower pressures? Preferably it could still handle 160F.

I use a Fill-rite 1604 12volt pump, and it does about 6 gpm and has lasted for 1000's of gallons. Many have reported they like that pump. I don't know how well it handles 160F.

I use the CF pump and just flip a valve to transfer hot VO when the CF is done.

Cool, nice tip. I was concerned how they list the replacement rotor right on the product info page. Perhaps they should reinforce that part of the rotor, if not for longevity but for more effective cleaning. At 150psi that sucker must spin up around 13,000rpm! What's the resulting flow rate? Does it go up by 65% too? Could you use a washer to reinforce an undamaged rotor, perhaps on the inside?

And since those bigger FPHE's can bring WVO up to coolant temp on one pass, I'm looking more into a two-tank system, since I thought it required putting a coolant coil in the fuel tank. But will using two FPHE's at once reduce their effectiveness? If one of them is taking WVO from room temp to 160F, surely the coolant comes out cooler than it entered.

My cold tank could still use a WVO blend, so it wouldn't be the end of the world if I had to use the cold tank while processing. (cold meaning warm weather, cold engine)

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Originally posted by SunWizard:
I put a washer on the top of my bent rotor about a year ago, and mentioned it on pages 35, 64, 75, and 99 and others. It works great and allows higher pressures.

I've haven't bent a rotor yet, knock on wood, but it is interesting that you've been able to run at higher pressures, how high are you running as a rule?

I have to admit, I have no complaints, running 180 degrees at 90 psi. I also am happy with my
Fill-rite pump. I don't know about hot oil, but I know it does surprisingly well with cold saturated oil.

Sam
Wyoming

I run about 100psi with the washer on it, since above that the speed doesn't increase, which I can tell by the sound of it.