I have a GL/Appleseed processor. I typically brew my biodiesel and recover the methanol. It takes quite a while. This weekend I attempted to recover methanol from glycerol byproduct. I put in about 25 gallons and recovered 4 gallons of methanol. How much methanol should I expect to recover?

What temp should I run for the different applications? I should tell you that my glycerol started acting funny at 183 degrees. The methanol was ROLLING out of the condenser and my condenser water got SUPER HOT super fast when the heat was applied at this temp. Below that, it trickled.

Maybe we need a sticky post for clear directions on how to recover methanol using a GL/ Appleseed and a sticky for recovering methanol from the glycerin byproduct? Time and temp guidelines would be helpful.

Thanks to everyone who contributes their time and knowledge here.

You need to be able to turn down your heat so that the condensor can still handle it, it sounds like to me.

You should get a alcohol proof hydrometer to test that methanol, It sounds like you got water in it.

My heater is running 220V and putting out 4500 W of energy. I currently have no ability to control the heat except off and on.

Where can I order an proof hydrometer?

Ok, you REALLY need to have heat control. Otherwise you can't control what you're recovering. Basically you need the ability to turn down the wattage of the heating element so that the temperature of the methanol vapors doesn't get so high (that it indicates you're boiling off water also)
An off-the-shelf method might be to set it up for 120V (using the same heating element you're using now) and then plugging it into a router speed controller (look up woodworking catalogs ot find a better quality one, I use a crappy HF one but think it's scary).
Then turn the heat down as the temperature at the condensor head starts to climb or when things like foaming start to happen. Also, you may need more cooling than your condensor is getting right now, the beauty of a water-cooled condensor is that you can just increase the amount of water flowing through it to get more cooling action, up to a point.

Do some searches in this forum, there are other ways to do this, but you're missing at least one major thing, the heat control. Are you talking about your 180F being at the condensor vapors, or in the pot of the pot still?

GM,

I don't have a pot still. Its my processor with the Venturi and Plumber's Delight water condenser.

183 is the what the temp gauge reading is of the material in the processor. Its probably foaming at this point. I don't know what the condenser vapor temp is. I will probably need a much larger reservoir of water for the cooling.

It will be some time before I need to do this again. I am talking with another forum member about a control panel for the processor which will accomodate a reduction of energy to the heating element from 220V to 110V. Is this enough control?

That is in fact a pot still (as opposed to a continuous still like a flash evaporator or thin film evaporator).

Yep, you're doing a few things wrong. One of them is that you have to have your heat on, but at reduced wattage, which you manually reduce as the temperatures of the vapors in the condensor climb during the distillation.

Just going down to 120V isn't usually enough unless just by chance you've got the outside temperature and the rate of heat loss through the insulating jacket matched to the wattage going in, in which case it only works 'right' part of the year if it's an unheated space.

You need to measure your temperatures at the condensor, not the pot. It doesn't matter what the temps in the pot are, they'll go way up from there as you remove methanol.

To reduce the heating element voltage, just plug it into a 120V outlet (you wouldn't do the opposite, take a 120V element and plug it into 240, but for 240's-to-120's it works great). It'll bring it down to 1/4 the wattage when you do this so everything will take longer, by the way.


Mark