quote:

Originally posted by Greasy300TDTurbo:
pump- I have an oil pump lying around from a small block chevy... I was gonna use it to make a sucker/filter/filler-upper pump but I went with a hand pump instead.... Do you think this might work if hooked up to a 1/8 or 1/4 horse motor or so? Actually, now that I think of it, my hand powered pump (Tractor supply "stroke" not "crank" type) might just make enough pressure..... Hmmmmm... Don't really want to sit there that whole time but it sure would be cheap to light a wood fire under the 55gal drum and pump it through by hand....

By hand would really tire you out and would probably be hard to maintain 90 psi.

An oil pump would proably work but its a trick getting the input and output attached, making no leaks, and getting a pulley and mount attached. A few bucks for a power steering pump from a junkyard would be much easier to do.

quote:

By hand would really tire you out and would probably be hard to maintain 90 psi.

Trust me its not that hard to make pressure with that pump I can easily crush racor canister filters flat when they clog (they have a fairly beefy metal center tube). I attatched this pump to my trailer when I went across the country and back this summer... I know what pumping by hand is all about... The only thing I worry about is it might be really hard to maintain constant pressure.. but in the interest of achieving a fully mobile setup I'd like to avoid electricity... and 12 volt motors are EXPENSIVE, not to mention heat... A generator might be the answer..

Wizard, quick question.

On your Dieselcraft, did you buy the mounting plate? If so, does it still successfully dewater (flash water) even with the mounting plate? Where does the steam go? Does it flow down and out of the 1" hole in the mounting plate?


Jojo

Yes I got the mounting plate and recommend it. Its well built, and you need something like it to mount to a barrel or pipe. Yes it goes out the 1" FPT hole.

Woohooooo!!!
Got mine today. Unfortunately won't be able to really test it till thursday at the earliest.
I did play around with it a bit, and gathered some info. Also some pics and approximate mounting dimensions for those thinking of making their own mount.

-Jet nozzle size is around .04" and seems to fan much wider right under the surface, near as I could tell by feel.

-There is a pressure valve of some type (poppet?) in the inlet. I'll tear into that later.
Nothing goes through till it opens at around 25 psi.
Odd part is it doesn't close till pressure drops to 12 psi.
It's vent hole (see pic) bleeds a little bypassing the centrifuge.
I'm thinking for our purposes it could be gutted and the vent for it plugged. It is likely only there to make sure the centrifuge doesn't make the engine oil pressure drop below a set limit.

The actual spinning part is in the center of pic, not really big enough for alot of filth


Inside the base


Mounting and drain dimensions

If you were to put the oil in a 20 or 40 litre LPG cyllinder then pressurise the head with 90psi from a compressor with a pressure cut off attached; would that supply a nice constant flow of oil at 90 psi to the centrifuge.
GraemeW

Great info! Just wondering if your altitude helps with the de-watering as well as the low humidity?

quote:

Originally posted by rccook16:
Great info! Just wondering if your altitude helps with the de-watering as well as the low humidity?

Yes the altitude does help, water boils at 200 F here, so that probably helps lower the temperature that the jets create steam. This appears to start removing water at about 120 F even on my first pass.

I just ran my second batch through this centrifuge, and it worked great. This batch was 30 gallons, totally black and smelled like french fries, and I ran it for about 30 minutes. The amount of gunk in the rotor was large, around 1/4" thick all around, but still easy to wipe out, kind of a plastic mud texture to the gunk.

I added the pressure relief valve suggested earlier in this thread from graingers. It popped off at first with cold oil since at startup the pressure is higher, and then closed and didn't pop again.

Finally got time to run a few real tests. The small capacity and need to run multiple passes seem to be the main drawbacks of this unit. Overall tho I like it for "polishing" the oil pre-filter. Should extend filter life considerably.

Dewatering wasn't as dramatic as SunWizard saw. There was some steam with 120-160 degree oil, but not like a flash evaporator. Seemed to me more along what you see when you splash the hot oil over an exposed surface to assist evaporation. Noticable reduction in bubbles in the pan test with each pass, but multiple passes are obviously required. I wonder if SunWizards inline heater was generating the steam that caused the sputtering sounds he heard? I'll add one tomorrow and test.

I mounted mine (pic below) with a bent 1/8" steel plate, attached with rubber grommets to wood. Seemed to cut the noise considerably, as mounted direct the barrel resonated something fierce. Also mounted with 3" drainage fittings to direct the oil and allow a ventilation system to be used to pull vapors and odors out of the garage.


Using a cold glass makes the water vapors visible. Water that condensed on the outside was not oily, but tasted like the oil smelled, perhaps indicating some of the disolved stuff evaporated with the water.


Some of the solids make it past the main bowl of the centrifuge, as indicated by the solids in the chamber where the jets are.


As you can see, there were alot of solids caught in the main chamber, 2nd pass, about 45 minutes running. Almost 1/4" thick. This was from about 15 gallons of oil I had left in the bottom of the pre-filter barrel, which had lots of settled stuff from previous runs.

Nice, glad it worked for you even with the bottom of the barrel oil. That rotor is similar to what mine looked like on this last run. What are you using for a pump? And what flow and pressure did you use?

I think mine works more like a flash evap. since I have the heating element mounted similar to Tim's FE.

Today I added a 120 volt 2000 watt heating element inline before the centrifuge. After heating my settling barrel to 140 degrees, I ran the previously settled oil through the heater and centrifuge into a clean drum. Exit temp was in the 160-170 range. Definitely more steam, but testing of oil caught exiting indicated not all the water was being removed, as it would with a flash evaporator.

Near as I could tell, it would take 3-4 passes to evaporate the water from well used oil this way. Since the centrifuge keeps removing finer particals with each pass,that is not a big deal. Seems like a 1-2 amp motor would be enough to operate the pump. My 6.6 amp motor used about a kilowatt in 3 hours, so other than heat, it's pretty cheap to operate the centrifuge.

Currently I have a power steering pump from a 79 Chevy pickup with a 5.5" pulley. Pulley on the 1725 rpm electric motor is 1.5" . This gives slightly too much oil, so I bypass a little with a valve. I will change the pulley on the PS pump soon. Will also be adding a bypass regulator later as I found pressure increases as the centrifuge fills. Also a couple times I had a chunk plug a nozzle. Didn't slow the centrifuge but the pressure spiked the 100 psi gauge hard against the stop.

Mine runs smoothest at about 90-100 psi. Much below 90 and it gets noisier. The construction isn't all that precise. It's off center a noticable amount, but is balanced with an added weight.

I'd like to see some tests on pour points of oil that has been run thru a centrifuge. maybe samples of befor and after in the fridge-freezer...
if anybody doesnt have anything else to do....

Verdict??

I am looking for a yes/no verdict from those who have experience with this unit (flash evap. + PS pump + dieselcraft) as to whether it will work for filtering + de-watering WVO straight from the dumpster in one step (i.e. 150gal+ of dirty, watery oil from a full dumpster), how many times/how often does it have to be taken apart for cleaning the rotor for this amt. of oil? how fast it will process this amt. of oil? what initial grade of (crude) oil can it handle? does it actually remove the water? Also, could anyone compare/contrast this unit to Bud's centrifuge using these criteria?

Another way to put this is: How would this unit fit in as a component in a filtering system designed to handle batch sizes in the 100-300 gallon range, as opposed to the way Bud's centrifuge would fit into this system?

Basically, would I be better off building bud's centrifuge (because, it seems, it de-waters and cleans the oil with less power draw (no electric heater))?, or would I be better off using the dieselcraft with settling, mist-washing, heating apparatus... seems much more expensive... Is my knowledge of the capabilities of Bud's spinner correct?

experienced opinions would be more appreciated than inexperienced ones.

quote:

Originally posted by Greasy300TDTurbo:
Verdict??

I am looking for a yes/no verdict from those who have experience with this unit (flash evap. + PS pump + dieselcraft) as to whether it will work for filtering + de-watering WVO straight from the dumpster in one step (i.e. 150gal+ of dirty, watery oil from a full dumpster), how many times/how often does it have to be taken apart for cleaning the rotor for this amt. of oil? how fast it will process this amt. of oil? what initial grade of (crude) oil can it handle? does it actually remove the water? Also, could anyone compare/contrast this unit to Bud's centrifuge using these criteria?

Another way to put this is: How would this unit fit in as a component in a filtering system designed to handle batch sizes in the 100-300 gallon range, as opposed to the way Bud's centrifuge would fit into this system?

Basically, would I be better off building bud's centrifuge (because, it seems, it de-waters and cleans the oil with less power draw (no electric heater))?, or would I be better off using the dieselcraft with settling, mist-washing, heating apparatus... seems much more expensive... Is my knowledge of the capabilities of Bud's spinner correct?

experienced opinions would be more appreciated than inexperienced ones.

You don't need to settle before using this rig. Probably similar on power draw since for any centrifuge you need to heat for it to work properly. And the power for this is not that expensive, I used about 3kwh= 21 cents for 15 gallons, and that had lots of water added on purpose. edit- If it has lots of water then just avoid sucking from the bottom of the dumpster is an easy way to avoid that. Both JOAT and I have confirmed that it does remove water.

Speed is 1 gpm.

I don't know a good way to describe "grades" of oil but it can handle very dirty oil, a large 100 micron screen right from the dumpster is all I did. The dumpster I suck from is typical, totally black VO with lots of floating chunks and several inches of crud on the bottom that I try not to suck up. You could do 100-300 gallons without cleaning it, but the amount of cleaning totally depends on how dirty. Cleaning is very easy however.

If you pay someone to make Buuuds model it would probably cost more than $200 the Dieselcraft does, but if you make Buuuds yourself it depends on how much stuff you can scrounge and what you consider your time is worth. No one else has built or reported on Buuud's design yet so its hard to compare cost and capablity yet.

Mist washing probably makes the same amount of sense with either rig.

Edit: I found one comparison, with Buuuds he runs it at 2gph, so to compare even if you do 4 passes through this rig you get 15gph which is 7x as fast which would save some power.

And with either rig you run a pan test for water, and if there is still water, with Buuuds you lower the flowrate and run again, or with this rig you run another pass. With this rig it is easy to watch the water evaporating to know when its done.

OK, SunWizard, how much would you charge for a complete unit?

quote:

Originally posted by B.K. Hosken:
OK, SunWizard, how much would you charge for a complete unit?

Sorry I don't want to become a vendor. But I think a few vendors who read this post are probably buying these to test and develop a rig like this right now. And I talked to Dieselcraft and mentioned that if they come up with a complete rig like this that they might have some good interest from the WVO people. They offer lots of other systems with pumps, filters, etc. for diesel. So they may come out with one also.

I think a vendor could sell this rig for about $500 ready made with pump, heater, and pressure guage. Since off the shelf parts retail for: centrifuge $230, mallory fuel pump $175, heater element, guage, pipes $30.

Hey great job Sunwizard and JOAT. What kind of bearings does it use? Any data on the life expectancy of the unit?

You're using a fuel pump to pump it? I thought the thing needed 90 psi?

quote:

Originally posted by Greasy300TDTurbo:
Verdict??

I am looking for a yes/no verdict from those who have experience with this unit (flash evap. + PS pump + dieselcraft) as to whether it will work for filtering + de-watering WVO straight from the dumpster in one step (i.e. 150gal+ of dirty, watery oil from a full dumpster), how many times/how often does it have to be taken apart for cleaning the rotor for this amt. of oil? how fast it will process this amt. of oil? what initial grade of (crude) oil can it handle? does it actually remove the water? Also, could anyone compare/contrast this unit to Bud's centrifuge using these criteria?

...snip...

This thing holds at best 1/2 cup of solids in practical use, 100+ gallons is unlikely straight from the Dumpster. You'd be stopping to clean it often. It also passes consideral sediment on the first pass.

It does not truly dewater IMO, but the jets and frothing effect aid water evaporation considerably, with multiple passes. I saw no evidence of water in the sediment collection area, just a decent amount of visible steam.

Due to it's small size and flow rate, it does not clean very well with a single pass. Also, if you try to run really dirty stuff through, you run the risk of a chunk clogging one of the jets (happened to me a few times).

I need a few more weeks to get my 8" basket centrifuge built. My opinion is it or Buuuuuds design will perform much better single pass. Both because of time/volume in the centrifuge and the lack of tubulance in the collection area. The Dieselcraft is nice for long term multi-pass polishing as you get the added aid to evaporation.