Myself and Chad at Arbor Biofuels Company,
have kept fairly quiet on the topic of Eco2Pure and/or sawdust.

However recently we took a trip to look at another biodiesel producers system and technology and they like us are using Eco2Pure however they use exclusively (not inconjuction with an ion exchange resin).

They have the ability to process lots of biodiesel and have processed at least 40,000 gallons this year using Eco2Pure as the fuel purifier and are producing ASTM fuel. Very impressive!

Note however it doesn't remove large amounts of methanol (just like resin) and they have found that it works significantly better than just sawdust (because they've tried it).

But what we wanted to know more than anything else was the economics and the difficulty of changing out the media (and how frequently you had to do this).

So here's the facts: they typically have soap concentrations of ~2700 ppm along with very small amounts of glyecerin since they use a centrifuge to spin out all undissolved glycerin after a demethylation step. So there is very low amounts of dissolved glycerin.

They have consistently shown that the cost runs 5-8 cents per gallon of fuel produced and they have to change out the Eco2Pure every day (pretty much).

On average they get about 30 gallons of fuel purified to ASTM per lb of media. I believe this is very consistent with our originally reported numbers of 40 gallons per lb...

GCG

quote:

Originally posted by GCG:
Myself and Chad at Arbor Biofuels Company,
have kept fairly quiet on the topic of Eco2Pure and/or sawdust.
GCG

GCG from your experience in the dry wash game, what dry wash resin do you think is the most popular used by commercial producers?

It would be purolite or thermax right??

Thanks for that GCG. A couple questions...

What differences did they encounter between Eco2Pure, shavings, and sawdust in regards to processing ease/complications, efficacy, & cost?

What does their equipment setup consist of, and what is the method of media change out?

I've found that planer shavings are easier to work with. Sawdust created issues with media compaction & more intensive post filtration requirements. I'm now using sawdust mixed into shavings b/c it seems to provide the best of both - less compaction, no issues with post media filtration, more surface area (glyc & soap seem to initially bind, then agglomerate better on sawdust than shavings), faster & less weight for me to shovel out .

I don't have numbers on soap ppm, etc as of yet and have cost worked out per gallon. On a small scale, cost is practically nil apart from my time & fuel spent picking up shavings & dust. On a large scale (paying for media), cost works out to a maximum of 4 cents per gallon with the worst case scenario of only 100 gallons filtered for every 55 gallon drum of media. I haven't the slightest idea what that is per lb, but will weigh a drum soon. Process is simple - demeth, bubble dry, settle, drain, filter.