After removing the methanol and letting the soaps settle a little, are people using a sock filter at all to remove clumping soap before they send it off to the wood chips or resin towers.

The reason I am asking is that I am getting very high soap numbers after settling, like 1,800 - 2,500. However to be honest, I am not sure if this is true as I do not completely trust the person's ability to make the .01M HCL solution (me). I just purchased some real .01N HCL from www.utahbiodiesel.com and will compare results.

But while using NaOH, I am clearly seeing the soap clump at the bottom. I was wondering does filtering with 1 micron sock remove a lot of this soap, lengthening the life of my wood chips and resin? Or does these not work on soap?

Thanks
Doug

Yes it will. It will also clog up quickly if used before the wood chips. Since wood shavings are so free to me, I first allow the BD to settle for a couple of weeks, then filter through the shavings and then through a 5 micron sock filter, then through the resin beds and final filter through two 1 micron sock filters.

As above, yes it will, but unless you are below 200ppm soap it will basically fill up and over flow immediately.

Well, I have a cone bottom settling tank and all the soap is now filling up there. Seems silly to dump it into the wood chips when I can just collect it and dump it out, no? Then let the wood chips do their work?

Doug

I would do just that. Collect the settled soap and put aside for later use, then run the BD through the shavings.

Doug-

I have that order from Graydon for the HCL. It will go out Monday. If you want to do some testing on filtering out the soaps, I will comp you a couple socks, say a 1 and a 5 micron nominal and you can report back to us on the results. That way if it doesn't work we will all know and you won't have any investment. If it does, Graydon and I will sell some socks.

Norman

Thanks that's really great.

I look forward to testing it out.

Doug

after demething and settling over night (also allowing bd to cool) ive had success with then pumping thru a sock filter. yep definately removes some soaps. My soaps before going thru the dry wash after sock filtering is under 100ppm. of course the sock filters can then just be rinsed out with water and reused over