Hi all,
I'm new at this posting stuff.

I have been making BD for about 2 years now and have been slogging away at manually cleaning the chips out of the old vegetable oil. This usually means preheating the oil (makes it go through the filters better) and then straining it through a disposable commercial cone shaped filter.

This gets pretty messy. Surely there must be a better way?

Any advise would be appreciated.

Don P.
South West
Western Australia.

Don,
For biodiesel, you don't need to filter the oil at all, just strain thru fly wire to remove the chips and fish heads.

I use Used Cooking Oil as my diesel fuel, rather than making biodiesel, so I filter the oil thru a 5 micron polyester felt bag filter to remove all of the particles larger than this.

As my UCO fuel tanks are unheated, I "cold filter" the UCO before adding to my UCO fuel tanks in the 300D. The tallow and high Melting Point oils are retained in the filter and only liquid oil is passed thru it. Even UCO which has a high % of high MP oils can deliver a large % of low MP oils for my use. The high MP oils are sent to friends who make biodiesel, for their use.
I can give you the address of the suppliers of my bag filters if you like along with information on my filtering set-up.
Tony

I think this depends a bit on whether you're filtering for SVO use (much finer filtration) or filtering for biodiesel use (basically, straining out the bits with a windowscreen/flyscreen/colander mesh). For SVO use, there are excellent instructions for building filter units , being sold online by Dana LInscott, and i really like what he's developed:

http://vegoilconversions.netfirms.com/

Mark

The way to prepare used cooking oil is:
1. Filter through a 10 or 20 micron stainless steel strainer that can be backwashed
2. Follow this with a 5 micron solids filter.
The resulting oil is clean enough to burn.
We add an additive that is a combustion catalyst and a homogenizer. This increases the combustion value and burns cleaner ands is almost smokeless.
The ratio of additive is 1 part additive to 10,000 parts of clean oil.

Thanks Guys, Yes I am making Biodiesel not SVO.

I guess that I shall just have to keep on slogging away at filtering it out manually. I just thought that there might be an automatic (pumped) system that someone used for cleaning the oil that I could adapt for my own use.

Currently I heat(Warm) the used oil in an old beer keg with the top cut off, then I pump it out through a mesh filter (designed for use on the end of spearpoints for reticulation bores)to get out the large imputities, then I let it settle in the drums for a few moments. After this I slowly suck of the top 3/4 of the drum into a paper commercial cone shaped filter, this leaves any finer impurities in the bottom of the drum. After all of the clearer oil is filtered I then empty the oil left in the bottom of the drums through the same filtering process. Doing this last means that I get most of my oil through the paper filter before having to deal with the dregs in the bottom of the drum.

I am told that old tractor fuel filters are OK to pump the oil through (under pressure) using toilet rolls as filter material, anyone ever heard of that being done?

Don P.
Bunbury
Western Australia.

Don,
As Girl Mark said, for biodiesel "straining out the bits with a ...flyscreen". Use some flywire over yout processor and pour the oil thru that.

Fine filtering is NOT NECESSARY if making biodiesel.

The contaminants will drop out with the byproduct.
I know of several people who make and filter their biodiesel from the reactor. None has reported issues with filters clogging on the biodiesel (even unwashed) in the past 5 years.

for filtering fryer oil in all food-service businesses we use an a)standalone filter-machine or b)a machine attached to the fryer.I use filtering machines attached to fryers to clean daily and a standalone heated machine to get rid of unwanted oil. I filter app. 130 lt. @ day john

I read all the notes and I am surpised no one suggested filter cartridges with filter houses. I would probably filter with 10 or 50 micron filter bag when you first get it
and then pump (Air operated double diapram pump they can pump cement) through a 5 to 10 micron filter cartridge with housing (water filter type you get at a Home depot) and then a one micron filter with housing.


There is also a stainless steel filter housing out there that has a bag filter and a cartridge. The bag gets the large stuff out and cartridge gets the small stuff out. The housing cost about $900 US NEW, the cartridge about $100 (but it is large maybe 25 feet of surface area), bag $5 and the pump $300 USED $750 NEW. It would make alot of sense if you are doing over 100 gallons a day. If you got something like this you would only need to pump once.

Ed

quote:

Originally posted by Don P:
Hi all,
I'm new at this posting stuff.

I have been making BD for about 2 years now and have been slogging away at manually cleaning the chips out of the old vegetable oil. This usually means preheating the oil (makes it go through the filters better) and then straining it through a disposable commercial cone shaped filter.

This gets pretty messy. Surely there must be a better way?

Any advise would be appreciated.

Don P.
South West
Western Australia.

I would use a filter bag. I am using the SVO straight, so I filter using a 5 micron bag, but you could just use a larger micron bag. The 5's are $2 each at filterspecialists.com

Don P, why keep slogging along filtering? They told you that you don't need to filter if you're making biodiesel. You only need to filter if you are burning straight vegetable oil.

I've got a kitchen sive. It's a little finer than window screen. It didn't need to be for my purposes but it's what I have.

I use a filter/funnel from www.jegs.com. They are a high performance auto parts mail order place. I bought the filter/funnel to filter the methanol before going into the fuel tank of my race car. Now I also use it to do the first filter on my finished biodiesel. I just put the funnel on a barrel and pump it out of the reactor into the filter funnel. When I want to get some out of the barrel I use a 12 volt marine pump and I recently connected a house water filter with a 20 micron cartaridge.

So if you're doing SVO, filter the crap out of it. If you're doing BD, strain the oil and quick filter the finshed fuel.

Wayne

Hi guys, thanks for all of the responses, I have taken the advice given by many and am now simply filtering through a "Flywire" seive straight into my Prep. tank. Seems to work fine.(Especially in summer). However I have a new question if I may.

Can anyone please advise me on the use of air as a means of agitation for my BD. I am thinking of simply putting a ball valve on the outlet at the bottom of the tank and attaching my workshop compressor to it. The theory being that as the air bubbles up through the mixture it will cause agitation. Any ideas, or am I approaching this the wrong way?

Don P.
Western Australia.

Hello was reading the post and just wanted to know if what i am doing is okay, have a toyota 2c diesel engine and a kia 2.7 diesel engine, what i do is use the filter system of water filters the cartridge type, i use a 1 micron and filter the oil, then i just pour it in the gas tank er diesel tanks and they seem to run fine although a little less power not much but is noticeable on inclines. However i do sometimes have a problem in the morning considering the temp here of about 30 if i am lucky cause in summer its usualy 33 and 28 or 29 in the Ber months of sept to jan . Is what i am doing bad for the engine or should i still mix it with diesel or gas or petrol just want to be sure that i am not saving on fuel for future repairs . thanks

Tony

I am constructing a small bio-diesel plant and am looking for some bag filters, to keep the junk out of the pumps and valves, Would you be able to pass on the name of your bag supplier. Or if anyone else knows where to get bag filters in Western Australia. Thanks greatly

I am a South African on vacation in Australia.
Want to visit biodiesel plant in Perth Australia.

Neels24@hotmail.com

I seems to me to be more important that you don't get any water that comes with the old oil into the process. Just rough-filter out the fish heads and use, but make sure the water stays away.
regards
dva

The best and easiest way to clean WVO to use as WVO fuel or to be made into BD is with a centrifuge as it take out all of the emulsified water that settling or filtering does not take out.

That's the way it works, here in the West

Buuuuud

Don P don't use air all. All it will do is drive the methanol out and make it more dangerous for fire and you wont make good bio without enough methanol.
Rodney

Newbie here, but just to make sure I have this correct, as long as I get the chunks out of the oil, all of the finer particles will fall out when I bleed off the glycerine and water?? I don't need any other filtering??

thanks-Chris

quote:

Originally posted by Tony from West Oz (The Wizard of Oz):
Don,
As Girl Mark said, for biodiesel "straining out the bits with a ...flyscreen". Use some flywire over yout processor and pour the oil thru that.

Fine filtering is NOT NECESSARY if making biodiesel.

The contaminants will drop out with the byproduct.
I know of several people who make and filter their biodiesel from the reactor. None has reported issues with filters clogging on the biodiesel (even unwashed) in the past 5 years.

Hi,

I get my oil from a potato & corn chip manufacturer. After removing the chunks and remanis of chips, I have noticed that there are many very fine particles that kinda "float" around the oil. After making biodiesel, these particle still remain "floating" and don't come out with the glycerin (even after weeks of let it stand by). Is there any suggestions you can give me? I tried filtering but the filters (both 10 and 5 micron) seem to clog very quickly.
Thx!!!!

Rod,
Can you give us a picture of what you are describing? I have never had floaters that didn't come out with glycerin.
You might try a centrifuge type filter like the Spinner II or bag filters that you could clean and reuse.
DD