quote:

Originally posted by RickDaTech:
Just had a better idea than wood pellets. I have several thousand acres of land surrounding me planted in cotton. Figure I could hand pick a few pounds after they make their first pass on the harvest. I'd try it seeds and all for starters.

Jehu, Want to try the wife's cotton balls?

Thanks Can I wait to see how you get on with the wife's cotton balls, then if you can recommend them from experience I'll take your offer up?

Jehu,

I think the cost per lt is 0.0084p :- 31.50 for 7.5kg Ecopure =4.2£ per kg divide by 500= nominal lt per kg = 0.0084ppl

RichDaTech,

These guys have changed from Magnesol over to Ecopure, though you can still buy Magnesol from them.

Jehu,

Keep up the good thoughts (out side the box but KEEP THINKING), RE Centrifuge, I used one initially to find the EXACT center of the rotor (Pressure Cooker bottom) using a dial gauge.

quote:

Originally posted by Jehu:
Yo!

It worked!

I scrolled up three sheets of kitchen paper and dunked them in a glass of biodiesel for 5 - 10 minutes.

herre is the first pic - you can see that the BD has cleared a little.

That's neat! I wonder if a small roll would treat 60L if flowed through slow enough.... Something to think about. I might also try to talk the local milling company to donate a big bag of planing shavings. Might have to start trying to experiment. I wouldn't mind even having to do one final water wash until I could build a resin tower as my drying tank is very effective.

Thanks. I got the VAT wrong, but youre dividng pounds by litres instead of pence. 420p/500litres is 0.84p/l

Ive been thinking about a centrifuge for some time. Any chance I can have a peek at your design

PS - my inlaws live in Staffs. If i take the missus down to visit her parents any chance I can nip over to see it?

quote:

Originally posted by holeshotkid:
That's neat! I wonder if a small roll would treat 60L if flowed through slow enough.... Something to think about. I might also try to talk the local milling company to donate a big bag of planing shavings. Might have to start trying to experiment. I wouldn't mind even having to do one final water wash until I could build a resin tower as my drying tank is very effective.

I used to do Graham Lammings 5% prewash to reduce load on the resin. I stopped because I didnt think the dampness was good for the resin, but if you dry anyway I would recommend that.

My goal is to completly do away with water washing and drywash/polish in a manner that is very economical. Ecopure looks promising but if there is something one can use that is even cheaper and just as effetive, that sounds even better. Thanks to all of you who take the time to try different things and a bigger thank you for sharing them with the rest of us! I've been watching this forum like a hawk trying to learn all I can from those who have already been down that road.

Is anybody familiar with a Luber-finer 500 or 750 filters? They are used on many large diesel applications (semi's, dump trucks) as bypass oil filters. They are huge but also use cellulose (paper and wood shavings) to filter the engine oil. I don't know what they cost for element replacements but they aren't much but with the canister and element I think the 750 holds about 3.5 gallons. I think they might be a good option if this is found to be a good polishing method.

Here is some info on them. on page 7
http://www.colorfil.com/Omnis/Hardware.PDF

Jehu -

What kind of "stuff" are you thinking might come out of the newspaper, aside from ink?

Also - what about soy ink? My local paper is printed using soy ink, might that be a bit less harmful in terms of "stuff"???

Finally, would a final polishing pass through a resin bed perhaps remove most of the "stuff" from the newspaper???

Just asking, and wishing I had saved that tower of egg cartons last month....

quote:

Originally posted by tjbeggs:
Is anybody familiar with a Luber-finer 500 or 750 filters? They are used on many large diesel applications (semi's, dump trucks) as bypass oil filters. They are huge but also use cellulose (paper and wood shavings) to filter the engine oil. I don't know what they cost for element replacements but they aren't much but with the canister and element I think the 750 holds about 3.5 gallons. I think they might be a good option if this is found to be a good polishing method.

Here is some info on them. on page 7
http://www.colorfil.com/Omnis/Hardware.PDF

A little more research shows the filter elements to be a wix filter number 51751 or 51750. Napa's list price is $18.50. The flow rates are pretty slow under 2 gallons per minute. I will try to find some micron ratings on them as well.

quote:

Originally posted by Bright Young Maverick:
Jehu -

What kind of "stuff" are you thinking might come out of the newspaper, aside from ink?

Also - what about soy ink? My local paper is printed using soy ink, might that be a bit less harmful in terms of "stuff"???

Finally, would a final polishing pass through a resin bed perhaps remove most of the "stuff" from the newspaper???

Just asking, and wishing I had saved that tower of egg cartons last month....

Newsprint will be recycled paper and cardboard, which will probably have all sorts of glue and bleach in it. I didnt get any of this with the kitchen roll.

I dont think resin will remove it, but who knows.

I think if there's no hurry to process, leaving biodiesel in some sort of suitable paper type medium and passing thru an ordinary filter to remove any suspended fibres will give fairly clean biodiesel.

Jehu,

No problem about the visit, PM me and I will send contact details.

Re centrifuge, I think you might be disappointed with the actual thing, all it is really is a metal box on legs with a removable lid, and a motor slung underneath. (probably putting my self down, but just being modest really)



My only thought about the paper idea is that for me living near (14 ml) from Filtertechnik, is that a replacement has got to be cheaper and just as efficient.

Is anyone doing any tests with wood shavings still ? if so how are you getting on ?

stumpy..

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Stumpy,

Thanks - I'll see when the missus would like to go down. The experiments with the paper were just out of interest. If there were no decent products like purolite on the market then I would treat it more seriously.

Ive been thinking of some ideas about making a home made centrifuge. One idea I'm toying with is attaching a steel bowl to the impeller of a pump, housed inside a bigger 'bowl'. All I need is a bowl which is well enough balanced.

Another idea is finding a good quality metal juicer, as I saw someone recommend on another thread. Ive seen a few on gumtree going cheap.

To think of the number of centrifuges I used to see being skipped from work

I thought I would share my recent experiment. I built a 4" X 36" PVC tower with screens on both ends. Have sealed both ends with removable plugs and taped for 1/4 inch tubing. I filled the tower with cyprus mulch that my wife had left over from the flower garden ($2.50 a bag for 2cu feet). I upflowed through the tower (which holds about .25 cents worth of mulch)at a rate of 3L per minute. I took a sample after running the BD through the tower and a sample from the same batch that wasn't ran throught the tower and did a "shake um up test". The results were outstanding. The BD that went through the tower had hardly any soap and the wash water was almost clear. The untreated BD wash water was a milky white and non transparent. I washed the batch in less than a 1/10 of the time and water it usually takes me. I consider this to be a sucess. Now for the longivity test. So far I have ran 120L through this tower on the same load of wood chips. I pulled a sample from about the 115th liter and it was still functioning well. I can post if you like as to the amount of bd ran through this before it needs to be reloaded. I might ad that I was using demethed bd.

Fascinating!!

Do you use KOH or NaOH?

Heated or cold?

Did you let it settle at all after demething?

I use KOH. I used to use NaOH but the glycerin turned solid on me after a couple of days. I alway use the prior batch of glycerol to pretreat the next batch of oil and NaOH made it difficult to do. I use an appleseed based reactor with heat. I think an extended settleing period would help, but I'm usually in a bit of a hurry. This trial run was withing 30 minutes of demething the BD

That is astounding. I would have thought that using KOH would make it difficult to get the soap to coagulate so that you can remove it through filtering. Have you conducted any other soap test on your BD?

How many passes through the column of cypress mulch are required to eradicate the soap?

I just did a single pass. I have done this on my last two 60L batches. What a breeze to water wash after passing it through the tower! I'm the type that washes until the water is crystal clear. This used to take hours and hours and sometime days. Now just a few hours of misting/misting/bubbling and it's done! I havn't done any further soap test besides the shake um up test. This whole setup cost less than ten dollars so I figured if it didn't work out, no big deal. It did and has already saved me hours and hours of washing. My hats of to Jehu for bringing this up. I'm glad people like him (and many others on this forum)are willing to share their findings, both failure and success

OK. Let me sidetrack this just a tad. I plane HARD wood, here in CR, and burn SVO, blended. I centrifuge with an Acme Juicerator.

I could throw together a PVC Tower, and fill it with different species of Planer chips. Does anyone think this will help filter out any fine stuff and water from SVO, that is more viscous than BD ???

Are y'all saying OIL will not be absorbed in the chips ??? I use the chips for cleaning small spills from transferring from the bag filter to other containers, prior to c'fuging ???

I think oil will definitely be absorbed into the wood chips. AFAIK SVO only needs to be filtered. I can't run SVO in my truck, so I am limited in my knowledge of running SVO.

For BD we are trying to filter out soap, water, glycerin and maybe other contaminants which are created from the reaction. BD will also be absorbed into the chips. The chips can be saved and burned for heat in the Winter.

I understand what you BD guys are doing. I was just interested in getting out ALL the water, if possible, using a variation of the upflow settling-filtering technique. ???