Ecopure is the latest development in drywashing biodiesel

It is a sustainably sourced, cellulosic filter media which is available with chemical enhancement to remove all production residues and contaminants.

This is a filterless process with no changeouts or consumables

Please see

http://www.filtertechnik.co.uk/biodiesel/pdf/Homebrew_newprices.pdf for details

and also

http://www.filtertechnik.co.uk/biodiesel/Ecopure_video.html

Thanks


Chris Spencer
Eco2pure / Filtertechnik

Any US distributors?

schroeder biofuels should be able to get it, I believe they are in PA.

quote:

Originally posted by cfunderburg:
schroeder biofuels should be able to get it, I believe they are in PA.

Anyone tried this yet? It sounds pretty good. No regeneration hassles. No contamination of fuel, particulate or chemical. Cleans the fuel to ASTM in one pass. Id already be testing it but there doesn't seem to be a distributor in Oz yet. As cheap or cheaper than any other drywashing approach. What am I missing?

I mean you don't have to invest in expensive regenerable ion exchange resins to check it out. You just need a tower to see if it does what it says. The stuff itself is cheap because once it's exhausted, you just chuck/burn/compost it. It's made of cellulose isn't it?

cheers

I recently went to a Filtertechnik open day in Nottingham.
I will hopefully be trying Ecopure myself shortly, the demonstrations I saw were very encouraging. In that the purification if done correctly is a single pass through the medium (thats it job done)

I checked with Schroeder and they don't have any columns suitable for "small" producers like us. I am going from memory, but I think he said a single column was about $9000.00.

We have them for sale, We are waiting to get them back from the powder coater.

Think this may actually be processed wood shavings. Red oak.

quote:

Originally posted by Ant:
Think this may actually be processed wood shavings. Red oak.

That's interesting Ant. Why do you think so? And what's specisl about red oak? Have you tried it/seen it?Ecopure I mean.

Cheers.

Well a guy who I believe was doing business with the guys who are now selling it told me...

That he was using a big tower full of what he called redoak woodshavings. He was getting them off a mate who had them as a byproduct of a furniture factory or some such.

He reckoned it worked great and then suddenly eco pure appeared through a known associate and cellulose based....

Just doing the math.

I wonder what is so magical about red oak. It seems any wood dust would work if red oak works. If this is what ecopure is made from, I have a bunch of wood shavings in my shop that I will be glad to put on anybody for shipping and handling charges.

Try it yourself and see. It was shavings not dust. Different mechanical structure to dust. Shavings may have been choppped to a uniform size to improve flow consistancy and make it look more like a 'product'.

Well Ant I took your idea and filtered a Dr pepper batch with oak shavings from my planer and it seams to have worked great.
I would think that most wood that does not have a high resin content would work. The pitch in pine could be a problem. I have not ran any tests to see if it really works are just makes it look clear.

OK. I just tried some at my shop.

I took about two hands full of maple shavings, crushed them to a consistent size separated the dust from the shavings on a window screen, poured them into a funnel with a 70 mesh screen.

I then took some biodiesel that had been filtered and run through a resin column which still had a small amount of soap or something in it as evidenced by the shake'm up test.

I then allowed the filtered biodiesel to soak into the wood shavings for a few minutes. I opened the valve on the funnel slightly so that it could drip into a 2 liter plastic bottle.

After filtering I did another shake'm up test and no visible soap or other contaminant. When I get home this evening, I will see how hard I can push the wood shavings with unfiltered BD. Initially this appears to be a breakthrough for filtering. I guess someone else could run some tests on it later to determine if the BD will in fact meet ASTM standards after using this process.

I have built a couple of small PVC resin towers which I understand will most likely fail at some point due to some chemical reaction between the BD/Resin/PVC. I wonder how the combination of the cellulose & BD will affect PVC.

More experiments to follow.

Please keep us updated on this. Water washing is getting old and taking up too much of my time. (It's still worth it though)

if its the cellulose that does it then it should work with shredded paper too.

quote:

Originally posted by Jehu:
if its the cellulose that does it then it should work with shredded paper too.

Just tried it with a sheet of shredded newspaper and half a litre of raw low titrating BD.

Definite soap extraction observed...

I took a sample of raw BD, which titrated at 7 (5 + 2.5). Added 500ml to a jug containing the shredded newspaper and left for 10 minutes. Did a water test on both the newspaper sample and on an untreated sample for comparison. The untreated sample formed a thick emulsion with no separation, but the newspaper sample gave separation of BD and water.

The water wasnt clear but extraction of soap (and methanol) had certainly taken place. No doubt there would be some cloudiness leeched from the paper itself. Maybe blotting paper would be better.

But, it works!

I would think the ink would be a problem with newspaper. I have used paper towels in the past for final filtering, but wood shavings are free to me and probably anybody near a woodworking shop. I didn't have time to test the wood shavings on unfiltered BD tonight due to an unexpected trip today and a need for BD for my truck's tank. I will try to conduct a test tomorrow evening to see if there is a significant drop in contaminants using settled but unfiltered BD.

One would expect a fair loss of product in the first wash due to the wood chips etc absorbing the raw fuel.
This would also be depended on size of the packed column used & volume of absorbant material.
In regard to coloumns, what would be the better alternative UP flow or DOWN flow column?

I would think that if residence time is a factor, upflow would be the better method. My limited test was done using downflow and it did produce good results.

I hope I have time tomorrow to try it out on unfiltered BD. Maybe I can build a 4" PVC tower tomorrow and try the upflow method.

I am trying hard to only use BD. The last time I bought Diesel it was $3.98 :-) about three months ago.