Just had a look at this story again after a break and noted the pictures of the pressure cooker spinner. These things are not designed for this purpose. Im not saying they are too weak, I dont know if they are or not, but I have cut a few up in the past and the wall thickness can be half as thick on one side as on the other. (they are just a casting for cooking in after all) Not a good prospect for a balanced unit. Would be worth checking wall thickness with a micrometer or something before spinning one at 4000rpm.
Johnno

Any more ideas ( besides brake drums, juicers, pressure cookers ) for building a bowl type CF with an off the shelf rotor that doesn't require machining ? -Thanks

Has anyone used a centrifuge to degum fresh squeezed soy or canola oil? Is degumming that simple or is the process more complicated?

quote:

before spinning one at 4000rpm.

yep and don't put your ear next to it listening for harmonics.

best to plug the extension chord into the wall away from the unit, just in case.

I like the idea of the propane cylinder for a bowl, they are universaly available and are built two piece steel, with the join at the middle.
If the cylinder was cut to the required height and chucked up in a lathe the bottom could be centre bored to take a good fit stepped centre boss for the motor shaft to connect into.
I am reckoning on a 7 pound sized cylinder to work with, as they are somewhere around 8 inch diam.
Can anyone see any pitfalls???

one of these would do nicely!

propane (8 Kb, 262 downloads) propane

quote:

Originally posted by Mister Lister:
one of these would do nicely!

Dont know what kinda file this is but it wont open on my system.

sorry, will try again

butane_jpeg (8 Kb, 237 downloads) butane

Still won't open. A picture will have an extension of .jpg normally. You should be able to double click on the file with explorer on your PC and it will display (before you put it in yet another post.)

quote:

Originally posted by SunWizard:
Still won't open.

Your doing something wrong when you transfer it from your puter to this board. LIke Sun said.... the file your trying to put on here.... if you cant click the file name in your puter and get your own picture software to open it.... then it's not going to work for us here. It should look something like on of these

c/windows/mypictues/thisIsThePicture.jpg
thisIsThePicture.bmp
thisIsThePicture.gif
thisIsThePicture.tif

Here's an interesting article about safety.
burst testing

And another about degumming...
Veg Oil Processing Plant

I especially like the part about the phosphoric acid. I'm going to try a 2 liter of diet cola in my next batch. (From the numbers I've seen, colas are about 10% phosphoric acid.) I'm planning to:

• mix 35 gal oil and 2L diet cola with a pump
  
• settle
  
• drain most of the cola
  
• wash the oil with 15 gal plain water
  
• settle
  
• pump the oil off the water
  
• dewater with flash evaporator (212F @ 175 psi)
  
• drain the water into the compost pile
  

The reason I'm not going to just buy phosphoric acid is because a 2L of generic cola can be had for 59 cents - not a bad buy for experimentation purposes.

quote:

dewater with flash evaporator (212F @ 175 psi)

YIKES !!!

quote:

YIKES !!!

It's not as insane as it might seem. Check out Tim C. Cook's thread. I've been doing it over a year and I've actually decreased the temp and increased the pressure with better results than any other method I've tried.

By the way, I didn't mention that I do plan to build a centrifuge, but not for dewatering. I don't think gravity (no matter how intense) can get all the water out. But after going through a centrifuge, a flash evaporator may be able to run at about 50C (@ 150 - 175 psi) and still be quite effective.

Perkhouse, thanks for that Test Devices link. Very interesting. If only they were in Vancouver B.C.

where are the plans for bud's centrifuge setup available for purchase/download?

Bud lives in Morton, Washington. Try looking on this furums' search engine with the words: Bud Pitts Morton centrifuge.

Or, alternatively, you could just find one of his posts on this thread and send him a personal message by clicking on his username and following the prompts.

No posts since July?? Did this idea not pan out or is everybody busy making and spinning nice clean biodiesel. I;m late to the game but have read all post regarding this. Then they all just stop. Somebody please direct me to the new thread or start posting experiences.

Thanks TJ

What kind of pump are you using?

tjbrewster,

I am still here and the plans for the centrifuge are still available either by hard copy or now can be sent PDF format with 10 pictures instead of the original 5 photo's with the hard copy.

As to wheather it is successful or not????? you would not believe how successful it has been. About a year ago Farm Show magazine did a short article about the centrifuge and the responce has been unbelievable. I have had many folks that have call and many more that have e-mailed saying how well the machine works. There have been some that have had problems, but most have been trying to change it to do a job that it wasn't designed to do. The builders that have had the best success have been those that follow the plans. Should anyone want info on the plans, just send me an e-mail at spikee@lewiscounty.com and I'll send you 3 pages of propaganda.

I have had some small health issues but seem to be OK now and am moving on to other project like a cold WVO lift pump and a 6 port manually operated switch valve that is now being tested on vehicles on the road.

BUT I'M STILL HERE AND DOING IT.

That's what I've been doing, here in the West.

Buuuuud