Wanting to have 100 gallons a day production / 2 days out of a week. 200/week - 800/ month.

Standard Collection (free pick up)
1" Diaphram / Air Pump 275 Gallon Tote.
400 micron filter

3 - 55 Gallon Stand Pipe Tanks w/ Dual Filter 100/50 micron filters incoming on each tank.

1 DieselCraft Dieselcraft Centrifuge OC20-
.93 GPM or 55 gallons per hour

Appleseed 80 gallon reactor, with Air Diaphram Methanol mixing pump.

3 - 60 Gallon cone poly tank for magnasol washing.

Filtered through a FSI S/S Filter Vessel
@ 25 psi, 1 gpm Via Dual 5/1 Micron bag filter.

#2 DieselCraft Dieselcraft Centrifuge OC20-
.93 GPM or 55 gallons per hour

2- 6ft Tall x 8" Purolite Ion Resin Filter 160lbs Total Resin.

Holding Tank till use.

Final 1 micron Racor FG1000 filter with water block elemnet.

In to:

3 Dump Trucks
1 18 Wheeler
1 F250
2 Tractors

Bio_Settling_Tanks.jpg (16 KB, 208 downloads)

Thanks for eveyone looking at my post.

But I would like to hear some Pro & Cons to this set up!

Thanks

Bio_Dry_Wash2.jpg (23 KB, 192 downloads)

RD,

It would be easier to critique if you showed where your ball valves are. Just an idea. Good luck.

Handyman

I dont understand why you are doing Magnesol and Ion Resin?

Is it because there is no methanol recovery?

I would run thru the Ion Resin after you let the glycerin settle outbut with the methanol in the biodiesel, let the resin remove all the impurities and then recover methanol.
The bead will become saturated in methanol very quickly and will collect all other impurities and let the methaol pass thru to recovery.

DWB,

Some biodiesel makers are using magnesol for gross contaminate removal and then purifying the biodiesel to a fine polish using resins.

The magnesol can be used inconjuction with talc powder to also remove water content effectively if produced during the reaction.

The magnesol is then laiden with excess methanol glycerins and soap which can be burned and is used by some facilities as a fuel.

It is a cost recovery method when using magnesol and essentially off sets the cost of then purifying with resin...

If however you use your resin for gross glycerin and soap removal, which are being held in solution by the excess methanol, then the resin bed will be used up very rapidly.

Additionally sending large amounts of soap (say 1000's of ppm) to Hydrogen Form resins like PD206, converts those soaps to FFA's and causes your final biodiesel to have a High Acid Number.

Several biodiesel producers using higher FFA's feedstocks and resin purification are having a tuff time with this right now and I have been asked by Purolite to help solve these processing problems. Therefore, if some one wishes to follow your advice and purify crude biodiesel with resin which still containing excess methanol, they need to do one of the following:

a.) a 5% prewash as Graham Laming suggest since it can greatly reduce total soap concentrations and assists in separation with out leaving to much water in the biodiesel
b.) even better - cycle a previous batch of biodiesel reaction glycerin through the feedstock as a pretreatment of oil prior to transesterification, in order to caustic strip the FFA's and reduce the final formation of soaps.
c.) use our coalescing technology post initial glycerin separation and pre-resin beds.
d.) Instead of a 5% water pre-wash you can try a demethyd glycerin prewash (the glycerin can significantly scavenge methanol and soaps)
e.) use a multiple stage base/base/base/base reaction using very little excess methanol - but I don't see anyone doing this since it is labor intensive...


Can anyone think of another novel way to reduce soaps prior to resin ion exchange purification???


GCG

quote:

Can anyone think of another novel way to reduce soaps prior to resin ion exchange purification???

Basically a take on Graham's method of demething and then settling. This drops the soap out of solution and it collects on the bottom of the demething tank and will need to eventually be physically removed. There may also be some residual glycerine precipitate along with the soap. Methanol is the glue, remove it and everything falls out, or so I understand.

You may want to consider a Glacier centrifuge at 2.5 gal/min. I have one and it cost the same as the smaller volume dieselcraft. The problem with low volume is that you don't get the oil clean in one passso you end up spending hours filtering small amounts of oil.

Opps, I read the first post wrong. Never mind.

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