quote:

Originally posted by Flyboyd8:
I cover the top of my drum w/ 2 pieces of 2" closed cell foam that I can remove one or the other to catch the drain down oil.

Hi Ken,

Now that you mention foam, I tried at one time to stick a thermometer in a flat piece of styrofoam and floating it on the top of the oil...the oil dissolved the foam. Oh well, another bright idea bites the dust.

Sam

Sunwizard or others with an answer...

Where can I get those washers used to seal up the heating element. I figured home depot would have them, but no. This isn't a mcmaster thing is it?

Tractor parts counter.

I guess I'm still too close to the city to have a tractor parts counter at my home depot. There is a tractor supply about an hour away though. I think I'll try an auto parts place first.

At my hardware stores, these were called bushings not washers. Until I asked by that name I couldn't find them at all.

I have not been able to find a 1" id washer locally either so I'm trying something different. I went to Home Depot with the 1" tee fittings and had the end where the heating element goes reamed out a little with their powered pipe reamer to put a small chamfer there. The idea is to provide a little undercut seating space for the O-ring to help it stay put. I will not be using any washers. Just lot's of yellow teflon tape and the O-ring. I'll let you know how it works out one way or the other.

While at Home Depot's plumbing section. I saw a gasket and thread sealant by Hercules called Brush on Blue Block. It is very thick, thicker than Teflon paste. 12,000 psi liquid 2600 psi gas, -90F to 450F. Stays flexible won't crack, shrink or crumble. I called up Hercules and was told it will withstand hot vegi oil 150 psi 200F no problem. They wouldn't tell me the ingredient, just that it's a natural resin. I am going to try it on one of the heating elements and see it if holds up. If not, I can always redo it with Teflon tape.

Since we never get finish talking about our CF on this page, I wanted to contribute with the latest pic of MY CF!

Fryer-oil-Cream-seperator.jpg (303 Kb, 196 downloads) My last centrifuge

Looks good. One flaw I see is that you could get some suspended water that drops to the bottom of the barrel and won't get sucked up since your barrel is not tilted and draining from the lowest point. This could keep re-contaminating your clean VO. Its hard to tell about this since you don't have the inlet to your pump shown.

That pressure relief valve definately does the job for me. The only problem is the opening point moves slightly when the oil is hot - maybe about 5 psi from really cold oil to hot oil. I don't remember which way it moves, but it's so minor I have ignored it.

I like those valves - cheap insurance. After I popped a storage barrel, I put on my compressed air supply to allow only 10psi to the storage barrel. I use a fridge compressor to blow air into the one bung in the storage barrel. The pressure build up pushes the WVO out the other bung and into my car. The relief valve prevents the pressure from building up too much.

Just need to run something past you guys. Can potentially get hold of a teel 1P766 pump (to the UK) which looks like it would be suitable for running the DC.

http://www.grainger.com/Grainger/items/1P766

or am I barking up the wrong tree here?

Thanks,

Mike

That looks capable of doing the job. The only thing you would need to worry about is matching the speed of the pump to the motor. It looks like you likely need about 900 to 1000 RPM from a 1/3 HP pump. Just size up your pulleys appropriately, and you're good. I've heard that these are quite noisy. Just so you know.

Canolafunola, what happened to your posts with the pics. I wanted to show a friend what a good installation you made and it was gone??

I'm about to order the O-ring from Mcmaster. I can get one for $5.40, ten for 3.60, or 25 for $6.94. I don't see myself using more than 2 of these things. I'm torn. On the one hand I get 24 for the price of one quarter of one. On the other hand I have no use for about 23 or 24 of these. It kind of sucks that the minimum shipping charge from Mcmaster is 4 bucks.

So does anyone need an O-ring. If someone says yes in the next few hours I'll get the big bag, you can paypal me a buck, and I'll stick it in an envelope, slap a 41 cent stamp on it and send it your way. I'll be rich!! Or at least I'll save people some money. Actually $8.40 by my calculations.



EDIT-Maybe I should order some washers and package all three together. I just checked, and If I buy 25 packs of all three, I can get 25 sets of sealing hardware for a little over 25 bucks. That's assuming I get away with 4 bucks shipping even with the heavy washers. So I think two bucks for the set(including shipping) would be generous assuming I could ship that much stuff for a buck. I'll look into that. Takers?

Anyone Interested? Just PM me if you are.

It looks like the shipping would be 75 cents assuming the envelope weighs less than 1.5 ounces. If not it would be $1.31. That would take about $2.50 to break even. Any takers at that price for the washers and O-ring?

I think the grease I was getting this summer was thicker than I was use to. This lead to me going though filter every 1500 miles. Sunwizard said he was getting 10K and I was thinking that centrifuge is what I need. After three attemps to get it set up I got it working. I had a water heater around the house that was not getting used. And I also had two heavy duty fryer filter pumps that are good to 400 degrees and a few spare plumbing parts.

I set-up my waterheater tank. Just like in Sun's diagram. Except that my pump is a heavy duty fryer filter pump. I tried it with the original ball valve and the pump just died (it shuts itself off when the pressure gets to high). So I changed the system to a 3/4 inch ball valve and I run it at 80 psi. I ran it for 3 hours with the water heater plug in. And there was not really much in the bowl.

My waterheater is 50 gallons I pulled the top heater element out and replaced it with a fitting and a piece of clear hose. I have a vent at the top to fill the tank with. Then the fill is removed and becomes the vent. I fill the tank until I can see fluid in the clear line maybe 40 to 45 gallons.

How hot do I keep the water heater I was assuming 125 Degrees F was good enough. And Is it really worth the electricity to have this thing plugged in for 3 to 4 hours?

I am still using my old system for grease filtering and I am getting 5K miles to the filter. I wish I could get my $350 back for the centifuge.

quote:

Originally posted by maddasher:
I think the grease I was getting this summer was thicker than I was use to. This lead to me going though filter every 1500 miles.

Wow MadDasher, 1500 miles isn't much. There is some confusion between thick oil and dirty oil in your post, thick oil isn't necessarily dirty, and if you have a heated system you can run it fine, but that doesn't have anything to do with the centrifuge, which is for cleaning the oil, not thinning it. You should cut your filter open and take a look to see if it is plugging from hydrogenated oil, or from particles.

quote:

Sunwizard said he was getting 10K and I was thinking that centrifuge is what I need.

The filter before the current one I ran for 12000 miles, as it turned out I didn't even need to change it when I did.

The centrifuge is a Godsend, no worry about water or plugging filters. The formula for success is 90 psi, minimum 140 degrees F, (I do 180), and just a little time to cycle the oil through 6 times (I do multiples more, but I'm anal).

quote:

I wish I could get my $350 back for the centifuge.

I'm sorry I don't have $350 dollars cause I'd buy it from you, and I'm really sorry you haven't found it useful since I know how well they do work.

Sam
Wyoming

You really should try 90 psi and 160F on the centrifuge......that is what sunwizard does and several others including myself and have good results.

As far as the electricity, I ran mine with the heat on (35 gallons in a 40 gallon heater), pump powering the CF, and an aquarium air pump to displace the humid air above the wvo, and got a measured 11.87 KWH. This is at 160F+ for 9 hours. The price for electricity is roughly 8 cents/KWH so I processed that oil for about 2.8 cents per gallon. I think that is definitely worth every penny.

Waylan

Actually it was thick but I did not have as much time as I normally have to let is sit and settle as I needed a lot of grease in a short period of time.

I will turn the temp up on the water heater and try again.

I agreed with what Waylan and Sam said, especially the bit about someone being anal!

The filter could also be blocked from water (I think). If it's a paper filter, it will get clogged, I'm sure that has happened to me before.

I also agree that the centrifuge is great - the greatest thing for me, since my oil is quite clean after I have mist washed and settled for a few weeks, is the ease and confidence I have of getting the water out of it. I can now almost tell by the ambient temperature and the amount of steam coming off the oil leaving the CF when it is dry.

Paul

I do not get anything out of the vent does that mean that my oil is really dry to begin with.

Once I got oil to flow out of the vent I filled it up to much I think and when it got hot it expanded then it had movement and just dripped it out the vent made a grease spot in the "grease pit" as my wife calls it.