I have a 95 7.3 ford and need to know how to fiter oil. I have a waterheater 40 gals and start with a 149 micron strainer at inlet and when warm I send thru a 25 mic and then 10 mic. But the filter heads I have bypass at 25lbs and the WVO must be dirty beacause before I run 20 gals thru system the back pressure is over 25 lbs and the filters bypass and boom dirty oil??? I also filter again thru 5 mics and then 2 mics. Is that to small?? Please advise all who know the right path to clean WVO!!!

if you filter down to 2 microns or even 5, and heat your oil in your vehicles system,it should take a real long time to clog a stock filter. most of those are around 10 micron.whats it cloged with, silt looking stuff, or wax looking stuff?try heating your fuel filter. the stuff realy needs to be around 160f or so to even pump and flow right.

What I am saying is that I get cloged filters in prefilter setup not in truck. I use a lot of fuel and need to prefilter a lot to keep up with my truck and tractor. the truck never clogs but I am new to WVO and need to prefilter a bunch of oil.

quote:

Originally posted by biohead2:
What I am saying is that I get cloged filters in prefilter setup not in truck. I use a lot of fuel and need to prefilter a lot to keep up with my truck and tractor. the truck never clogs but I am new to WVO and need to prefilter a bunch of oil.

Disabling the bypass may allow pressures to rise, causing deformation of the filter medium and leakage of unfiltered fuel to the outlet.

What are your prefilters clogging with?
Can you get larger (washable?) filters and a housing, without a bypass, to hold them?

I do not use much fuel, so gravity filtering is sufficient for my purposes.
Others use pumps to provide pressurised filtration.
Bag filters subjected to pressure will need a supportive housing to prevent filter stretch and resulting increase in the size of particles flowing thru the filter, instead of being retained.

go to walmart,get a $1.00 piece of tightly woven cotton or felt or denim. gravity prefilter through that.warmed oil if you can.your filters should last much longer.

Hey hanks for the tip!! Can the fabric just hang at top of 55gal drum with a stand pipe exit or should I pump from top of oil supply into waterheater? Then maybe any waste and water would be at bottom of oil stash??? How many microns do you think the material is???

Do not rely on the cloth for micron rating, use it to prefilter, before using a rated filter. This is just to remove the stuff which clogs your filter.

Settling is the key. I have 200 gallons of grease at my house. I use 50 to 80 a month. Every once in a while I get behind and thats when I hurry it and things get clogged.

I use up to 350 gallons per month of prefiltered wvo. I can usually prefilter an additional 100+ gallons per month for our co-op with the same unit. I normally swap out my vehicle fuel filters every other oil change as a preventive measure. But when I was seeing how far I could go before my vehicle filter clogged..I was able to get at least 10K out of them using my simple handpump prefilter unit.

Don't forget about removing suspended water too.

check out my various filtration methods here at the link in my sig

Try this one, it works for me. Go to your friendly neighborhood motel and ask if they have any sheets for sale, they always have the very good tightly woven heavy duty stuff and they usually have a pile of them ready to give away (or toss.) Cut them into two foot squares and drape them over your 5 or 6 gallon bucket (which you can also get free at the same place) push a sag into it and snap the ring on to hold it in place, pour your slop into it and ~viola~ you have ready to use highway juice! The "ring" is simply the plastic lid with the center cut out with a jigsaw and all but 4 of the locking ears cut off. Now, the system I use for getting a good flow rate is to simply mix a quart or so of regular gasoline with the oil before pouring it into the filter bucket, so temperature is not much of a factor even in cool weather. Each cut square of sheet will usually filter 5 or so gallons with no problem, then just toss it and use a fresh one, I heat with biomass so I save them for fire starters. I drive an 83-SD and have been using this system for over a year with no problems. I find that pouring the sheet filtered oil through a 5 micron commercial sock filter it passes right through it so I'm satisfied with my system, and keep in mind that Rudy Diesel did NOT transesterify his oil! And get this, my engine oil is much cleaner than when I was burning Ali Baba's crude (I use Wal-Mart full synthetic) and my mileage is consistantly in the 30-34 range. I'm a get-it-done type of person not given to the needless quagmire of what-if's and yes-but's who puts his own as- on the line to get results. This is my fifth diesel since 92 and I no longer even consider going back to the messy business of methoxide conversion. I even gave away my old setup to the ex-hippy chick up the road. I'm presently in the process of setting up an Indian press and three 1000 gal retired propane tanks for storage/sedimentation, and have made a deal with a Georgia peanut farmer to buy in bulk. The local neighborhood market has agreed to buy all I want to produce, and will mix it directly with their crude based stuff and sell it as "blend." SVO is the future of biodiesel my friends, wait and see!

I'm a real newbie. Question? Can a person use a 5 gallon bucket with say 2 inch holes in bottom one inside another with exact same holes in each. Place a blue jean filter between buckets and simply pour a bucket in and wait for it to filetr. Further more can a person use a old kidney dialysis filter to do a final filtering. I know the micron has to be small and was wondering if this type would work.

The micron has to be small. 200microns it tells me on the package insert. It seems like 100 is what's needed. They may make smaller? Not sure. Just trying to research before I jump in.

Steve

Furthermore, is SVO mixed with the proper setup working. I've seen debates on everything. This seems very easy using a one tank system with proper injectors. I'm trying to avoid a hugh mess.

Steve

If you want to step up to the plate and spen $300 plus check out http://www.filterbag.com. They look like they have a good unit. John

It's me again!!! since the last post I've been up to my elbows in working up a really decent wvo system. I now use a deepfryer I found at a flea market to preheat the stuff, and found that it invariably quits boiling at around 375 degrees F. So then it's pretty well dewatered when I pour it through a 400 threadcount sheet on a 55 gal steel drum, held in place by the locking ring that came with the drum. A word of warning, BE SUPER CAREFUL WITH 375 DEGREE OIL, THE STUFF WILL COOK YOU!!! I have a very heavy full length rubber apron and gloves I bought from Grainger just for this purpose. And don't gripe about the little bit of electricity required to heat the stuff, it's still FAR cheaper than any crude you'll find anywhere this side of the Persian gulf. When it cools I pump it over into a couple of plastic drums with a $39 pump which I bought from Harbor Freight plumbed into the bottom of the steel drum. From there I use a simple hand cranked drum pump I got brand new at a discount tool joint for $24.95 with a lenght of hose into the ol Mercedes. NOW.......and I think this may be important, every 200 gallons or so I switch to crude based ripoff diesel which I treat with twice the recommended amount of diesel treatment for one tank. I've had NO problems, none, zilch, zero, get it? for over 70,000 miles. The only problem you're gonna have is the stuff WILL smoke when you first crank up, so if you got stuffy neighbors you may want to put one of those aggravating "startup" systems in the trunk. ALSO, (and this is clearly illegal), you can safely mix as much as 50% used motor oil in with your veggie before heating. ALSO, (and I've been doing this for ten years) pump a couple gallons of regular gas into the tank for every ten gallons of veggie in cold weather, and unless you live in Frigidaire Minnesota you can drive right on through the winter. I live in Tennessee, and our winters are not exactly arctic, so you may need to experiment with that a little bit. I'm currently working on a sand based filtering system, don't laugh, it's working pretty darn good, but I'm not going to give out the particulars until I get a little more comfortable with it. It should eliminate the need for changing cloth filters every few gallons. I also have a good high speed centrifuge which I've used quite a bit, but it's not the "magic bullet" I thought it would be when using it with SVO. (does a great job on the used motor oil though ) NOW........and you're not going to like this.......... When Hillary goes into the whitehouse we're going to pay (substantial) tax on our home made fuel or face some (really stiff) penalties, so enjoy it while you can!

to de water. i'm using a dura heat kerosine heater and a 5 gal cook pot. took the cage and top off the heater place the pot on top and fill with oil. let cook till it stops crackl'n. then i have two 6 gal metal cans and a 5 gal metal can to recieve the hot oil.

i'm filtering thru a 400 micron bag followed by a 50 micron then 5 micron one stuffed in the other. the filters are supported by a bucket lid with a hole cut in it.

the hot oil passes thru all three filters faster than water.

the two 6 gal cans are for fuel filtering the 5 gal can is for filter draining.

once filters start to slow i pull em put em in the 5 to drain completely then i can clean them out.

i gal of k1 gives me the heat to filter around 20 to 30 gal of decently setled oil. of course the the watery stuff takes longer to heat up and dry out.

to fuel the car i tried using a fuel pump from an old vovlo i'm parting out. work's but it's slow. so i usually just pour it in the tank using a funnel.

I must have a good restrauant. They filter to 5 microns with a filter system in their fryer. When I get the oil it looks like slightly dark canola oil from the grocery store. I let it sit two weeks and it is clear.

Gannamede where in tennessee do you live, I live in Nashville. Also can you really use that much motor oil 50%? And if is that not harder to get than the WVO? Anyway take it easy.

i use whole house water filters to filter wvo, the cheesy 15 to 30 micron in the tank and the nice 1 to 5 inline, the filter set up is around $25 and the filters are 2 for $6

i hope noone mixes too much oil in there fule,
i know for a fact that you can mix a sertain % of old engine oil with wvo but if you get the % too high the engine may run away
i hate to pay but since wvo is free im leaving old moter oil alone.