http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlVzpthm3IE

ask any questions, I'll eventually be back
I can think of several improvements I would like to make to the processor, and possibly sell them one day . I see many rigs on line that are 2000+ $ that are complete , total BS.
This rig really does a great job, but please if you have even better suggestions I'd love to hear them.
It will heat up in about 20 minutes, then I spin for an hour or more.
The rotor is fairly clean though, because I settle for a month first.
Any one think I shoot for 90 psi?
In the video I do not explain that I have a way of regulating the SBC gear pump. It is just a U-shaped nail that is adjusted for height below the pump's built in spring would be. I could have blocked this off but I wanted to use the minimum load against the motor possible. It is also safer that once both valves are closed it is already preset to a pressure that will not overload the centrifuge/rotor.
I tried a 3/4hp motor and it would overheat at about an hour of processing and start tripping the therm reset. so i repurposed it to a pump you see at the end of the video on the plywood board. I have two of those - a dirty , and a clean purpose one.

I have read of people complaining about the drip from SBC pumps before and wondered why they were so pedantic. Mine drips nothing like what is coming out of yours and I was really surprised to see how much it was loosing!
Perhaps because I bypass the standard ports on mine and have the bypass blocked the oil takes a slightly different internal path or isn't as highly pressured in that area?

Machining the pump to take an O ring seal could be difficult but I wonder if the pump was drilled near the end of the shaft housing and a small line tapped back to the inlet side of the pump would draw off the excess oil without pulling in too much air? Perhaps it would be easier to put a flat surface on the end of the pump housing and have an O ring there to seal it with the help of suction rather than trying to hold back pressure?

it really only drips when the pressure is applied to the centrifuge. My other SBC pumps for simply moving oil between containers hardly drip at all.
I really think that trying to get rid of the drip with a big block valve stem seal wouldn't even work due to the pressure .
I think the real answer here is just make that round (air input hole) you see in the video BELOW the drip. No more problem. The fans you see exhaust air. I read that helps additionally get rid of water vapor compared to a closed drum.
When done processing fuel , I simply plug that 3" hole with a plumbing plug that has a wingnut on top. That keeps the smell down in my garage, and from insects getting in and dying.
We got some big ass june bugs down here in Texas, and it's a battle to keep my garage clean a month or two!

ttt

only an hour of run time? seems kinda short?

well at 108 gallons per hour for an oc-50 - thats a minimum of 2.16 passes if I have a full 50 gallons in there.
I can rarely fill it even to 50 gallons , cause some spray will start coming out of the hole.
I normally process about 40 -45 gallons because i just don't need more.
so that is about 2 1/2 passes.
I sometimes run up to 1 1/2 hours, but I rarely see any more captured in the rotor.
In fact i barely have much build up in the rotor at all, just a very thin layer, enough to make it opaque. This is after settleing for a month to 6 weeks.
I will totally admit..... the oil i get seems clean. Especially after settling. It's from a chinese place, and an italian joint.
really I'd say what i do is total overkill, especially running the temp up to 212 to make sure no water, then testing the rotor's output when it spins down for latent water.

so far ive burned about 150 gallons of veggie oil and I see absolutely nothing on my racor 1000 2 micron filter. Mind you these are huge 18 wheeler size filters , but still .....nothing on the paper.

I think the settling ( as well as the clean oil to start with) is the key to your rapid cleaning.

Even when I was building up my stocks and took all the oil I could get, even the filthy wet stuff cleaned up to liquid gold given a good long settling time. Often I would just put it away for 3 months or more but the oil always came out golden and shiny. The only real difference was the amount of crap left in the settling tanks and the amount of oil yield but the oil was always clean in the end.

Due to my settling processes I filter thousands of litres of oil through a single 7" filter bag and a water filter cartridge and when I changed the last pair out, it was plainly obvious they could have easily gone at very least 3 times the amount of oil I put through them and still been flowing freely.

I have read a lot about people having to CF their oil for long hours and clean them multiple times so I think it is great the process can be streamlined by settling the oil and the fact you get so little rubbish out of your CF shows the effectiveness of the settling.

I have said for some time now, the best way to clean oil is to do nothing.

quote:

Originally posted by DCS:
I have said for some time now, the best way to clean oil is to do nothing.

couldn't agree further IME. In some ways this was the greatest disappointment after building the Centrifuge. I have processed unsettled oil once and it did collect a lot more in the rotor. However it was pho partially hydrogenated , so i had to ditch most of it. CF'd fine though once heated up.

I really like you aussies. I think here in Texas, we have a lot in common with the outback. Man, I 'd go live there if it weren't for the overly restrictive gun laws. How does that make sense in the outback? there's some dangerous **** out there and you can't even have a semiauto?

any more questions on how to run a centrifuge with a gear pump (SBC) ?