Sponsors Biodiesel & SVO Home Biodiesel & SVO Forums Methanol Recovery How much Methanol Should i be able to recover?
Biodiesel & SVO Home Biodiesel & SVO Forums Methanol Recovery How much Methanol Should i be able to recover?|
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member |
I recirculate because I use a water heating element to warm it up and I don't want the glycerin to build up and burn it out.
I think 10 gal would probably be safe. I do 40gal in a 55 gal drum; that's 27% head space. 10gal in a 15gal drum would be 33% head space, so I can't see you having issue with that. Try this for visualization: boil a small glass of soapy water in your microwave and watch the bubbles form on top. I imagine that is similar to what it happening inside the hot pot. The soap bubbles should hit some height and more or less break themselves. |
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I assume you are not joking when you say you heat up a drum of Methnaol laden by-product with a Propane Burner. Does anyone else do this sort of thing? Sounds kinda dangerous to me. |
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member 2008 sponsor |
I dont think its any more dangerous than the guys that just boil off the methanol into the atsmophere. At least my system is totally sealed.
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How do you "totally seal" a still? Just wondering.
Brian Rodgers  4 banger diesels 86 Troopers, 81 Peugeot 505s, 82 VW Rabbits, 1800 gallons biodiesel and counting. My Revamped Renewable Energy Site http://www.outfitnm.com |
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member 2008 sponsor |
ok, maybe it not "totally sealed" but its as close to it as you can get. I just have a very small vent on my condensate collection jug.
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Just FYI, I thought I'd post what I'm able to recover.
I recover the methanol out of my glycerin only and I get about 17-18% of my original input back. I use 20-21% methanol/volume. So if I use 100 Liters of methanol to convert 500 liters of WVO then I usually get 17-18 liters of methanol back out of my system. I'm sure I could get a little more if I run it a while longer but that's what I tend to get back. Also, I do not use the pre-wash (in fear of contaminating methanol with water) 1986 vw jetta w/555,000 km & 1999 2500 cummins powered dodge on B100. Not to mention the other 5 vw's in the family. |
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VWPickup,
What temperature do you distill at? Do you recirculate the head vapor using a venturi? How much heat input do you use when distilling? What's the configuration of your still? I tried my first distillation last week and got foam when crossing over 210F. I found an interesting table in one of the forums that shows what percentage of residual methanol still resides in the biproduct at a specific temperature. Here's a snippet of the post: Glycerol / Methanol Solution % MeOH --- Boiling Point, F 45.00 --------- 172 40.00 --------- 177 35.00 --------- 182 30.00 --------- 189 25.00 --------- 197 20.00 --------- 207 15.00 --------- 222 10.00 --------- 244 5.00 ---------- 288 1.00 ---------- 416 0.00 ---------- 550 Thus, I was trying to get to 244F, which seemed to be the best bang for the buck, but got glycerine foam at 210F and had to stop. Currently, I'm evaluating whether to use HCL to neutralize the soap/catalyst, which should knock out the foam issue. Steve 2007 Dodge Ram, 2006 VW Jetta |
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Making bio with 22% Methanol and using my recovery method I get 26% 100 proof back...
i.e. 150 litres wvo 30 litres methanol 8 litres recovered When using 22% I would recover 12 litres methanol.. HDJ80 Canberra |
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HDJ80,
Could you explain your setup as well? I built a separate distillation system. My first run was with 90 liters of biproduct and I had 16 liters of methanol when I got foam. The foam messed up my purity calculations since glycerine has a higher density than water. I estimate that the purity was in the mid 90's when I got about 1/4 liter of glycerine in my methanol cubie. Steve 2007 Dodge Ram, 2006 VW Jetta |
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HDJ80,
Point of information: 30 litres divided by 150 litres is 0.20 aka 20%; Do you mean 20% methanol? How much crude glycern byproduct do you remove? Do you use a prewash? Also 8/30 is .266 or 27%?? And 150 litres times .22 (22%) is 33 litres or 12 litres divided by 33 litres is 0.367 or 37%. Again how much crude glycern byproduct? Please clarify. Thanks, Rick G.
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I have an appleseed processor with an attached methanol recovery system. Is there any reason why I shouldnt try and recover methanol before removeing the BD from the reactor?? Seems like all Im doing is heating it and that should not make the reaction go backwords would it??
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depends. do you remove the glycerin before methanol recovery? if so, there's no risk of a reverse reaction.
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Have not actually tried it yet. So what your saying is, remove the glycerin first or the whole thing could go backwords a bit?? Whats the final say on how much methanol is in the bio diesel compaired to the glycerin. Does heating the BD hurt it at all or could it acutally help let the soap fall out? Any other thoughts on this.
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Yep. Excess methanol drives the reaction towards BD...remove the methanol when the catalyst is still present (in the glycerin), and it will go backwards some.
About 1/3 of recoverable methanol is in the BD and 2/3 is in the glycerine.
Only if you go REALLY hot...keep it under 200F and you should be fine. And getting the methanol out of the BD does a lot to get the soap to fall out too. Its a whole technique of its own...GL's 1 Day Process. |
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member 2008 Sponsor |
Guys,
Thanks for the info on this. I really appreaciate the time you have put into getting measurements.
Another way of looking at this is how much methanol are you using total, (consumed in the reaction plus waste)? Based on this example, the total use is 16.4%, if I use the assumptions that you get 18% back and it is pure. Which is good. It puts you in the range of how much is needed to do a 2 stage base/base, if you are careful. Can anyone verify how much of the excess methanol is in the byproduct and how much is in the BD and under which conditions? Or does the ration remain constant? |
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I am still collecting info , materials for processor , & WVO & contacts for more WVO .
I figured that any recovery of any methanol was a good thing , during the process of gathering of info on this subject , a couple things that I have come across but have not been addressed here yet are the qualities of the methanol both as new & then as recovered . New [ as far as I have read comes in at least 2 levels , M1 lower grade , then Tech higher grade , mostly what the racers are using . Then the need of refining the recovered methanol . 94 dodge ram 4x4 , Cummins 5.9 need to get an other vw diesel the others rusted away long before the engine |
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I use 22% in my process and when I fill my 15 gallon recovery still with about 12 gallons of Glycerin I get back 3 1/2 to 4 gallons of methanol. I am not sure why it varies but it does. I mix while heating and it seems to work better, I no longer use a thermostat I just let it go for 8 hours and it stops producing at about 200 degrees. Quality is between 95 and 98% pure. Andrew has seen pictures of my still for the rest here it is.
1996 4x4 3500 4.10 5spd Dodge. 1982 Toyota Diesel. 55 gallon steel drum type reactor open top with lid and weber BBQ bottom. 55 gallon poly standpipe wash tank.  IM_A0001-1.jpg (19 Kb, 55 downloads) |
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member 2008 Sponsor |
Bpine,
how is it going? The 12 gallons, is that 2 batches? What size batch? I did a rough calc. and it sounds like you are getting under 15% total use. That is excellent! |
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Sponsors Biodiesel & SVO Home Biodiesel & SVO Forums Methanol Recovery How much Methanol Should i be able to recover?
Biodiesel & SVO Home Biodiesel & SVO Forums Methanol Recovery How much Methanol Should i be able to recover?© Maui Green Energy 2000 - 2008