Does anyone have any plans for a Methanol Recovery setup? I'm going through about 100 gallon of glycerin a month and would really like to recover that methanol.
When I do a search it just turns out pictures but no plans. Thanks,

Buzz

To my knowledge, this is the only set of plans out there.

http://www.b100wh.com
Then click on the Recovery Condenser link.

Also, http://www.make-biodiesel.org has a section on methanol recovery as well.

-Graydon

You could build an appleseed GL processor with a water cooled recovery setup (plumber's delight) and use it exclusively for glycerin methanol recovery. If you use NaOH, the glycerin will get very hard when its demethed and cooled so keep that in mind. Your plumbing will get jammed with glycerin goo.

http://www.b100wh.com

That's the one I am going to build. Good job on the document Legal.

Thanks for the link back gents. I have since that page was made swapped out the pail for a 48 LT water heater 'cause I needed greater volume for demething.

The rest is the same though. I've bought a second ShurFlo pump to move water through the condensing tube. Way overkill I will admit, but at the same time the pump acts as a spare should my main one fail. Very reliable pumps those ShurFlo's; I now have 3 of them.

If you're a fabricator and can solder copper pipe and can tig weld or braze a fitting for a heating element to a stainless steel beer keg, there are great plans for stills and reflux condensers on the www.moonshine-still.com (I think). I found on another site, www.stilldrinkin.com, selling distillation setups that appear to have used these same plans.

Mine is a beer keg boiler with a copper reflux condenser I built from the plans at the 1st site. Works great. I can process about 10 gallons of glycerin a day and get alcohol that tests at least 96% purity.

-Jay

Here's our reflux still, it kicks ass and was easy to build. We get 98-99% purity every time, just have a thermostat on the top and we have both 220 and 110 hooked up- 220v to get it up to operating temps and then 110v to maintain less cycling on the thermostat.

http://www.biodieselpictures.com/viewtopic.php?t=614