All,

I've been reading this post off and on for quite a while and notice that postings have slowed in the last few months. I would like to get away from water washing all together and will be reading back thru the threads to research the how's and why's later, but for now, I would like to find out how pleased those of you that have been dry washing with wood chips and resin like it and is the quality better than water. Has drywashing reduced your time/effort. Is dealing with the waste more/less hassle than water?

Thanks,
Irokcj5

Can't really compare as I have never water washed. (ok once.) Here are the things I have learned so far.

1) Get really good at soap testing. I suggest for the first time, buying .01M HCL from Graham or whomever. My test are coming out wacky and currently do not rely on my ability to make .01M HCL. You already are going to buy the blue indicator, so get some standardized .01M HCL there as well.

1a) Get a pipette system as you want to measure stuff really accurately. Fabricator is using 3ml ones, and I am using 10ml. He can measure down to 30ppm. Graham has these or get off of ebay - pump and pipettes.

2) Don't over recover methanol. Search for CHUG and WBD and read that thread. I am making way too much soap, perhaps up to 3000ppm and finding it a ***** to remove.

3) Test your wood chips. I found a hard wood milling place and dove into their dumpster to get chips and now have found they are only doing a little bit. This is my main problem right now.

4) Resin column. Before you use it for the first time, load it up with clean bio. It will turn this first bit (3 gallons or so) pitch black. Drain off and reload and drain again until you are happy with the color. I bought the Thermax.

5. To create the wood chipper, just put one barrel on top of another with the top flipped upside down. On the inside you are going to have to make a drain system that is parallel with the bottom of the barrel. I think fabricator welded couplings though the side of his top barrel. I have not such welding ability so I just used the bottom bung. However, the key part is making the piping inside. From the outside up into the bottom of the barrel >>> 3" 3/4 pipe as far as I could thread it >> female elbow >> 12" PVC Pipe I put 3 channels in (with a dremel) top, and 2 sides >> street elbow >> female elbow >> another piece of the 12 pipe. Wrapped around the 2 pipes was 2 pieces of coarse 16x16 stainless steel wire mesh. DO NOT GET TOO SMART like I did and use fine stainless mesh (200x200) to really filter out particles and then have to try to empty that #^$*)*$) top barrel because the mesh clogs up really quickly. (just a suggestion - Use the coarse mesh.)

According to all my reading and experience, it SHOULD be great. Clean Bio in less than a day, no water. But I am struggling right now. Hopefully soon, it will great for me too.

Doug,
Thanks a lot for that detailed explanation. I have the soap testing equipment you mentioned, but I don't get true results. I think I make goo 0.01HCl, but maybe I'll order some just to be sure.

What does over-recovering methanol have to do with 3000ppm soap? I don't understand that part. I know when you recover methanol, soap drops out, but how does that relate to 3000ppm?

Thanks.
irokcj5

I still filter with wood shavings & sometimes resin. BD quality is as good as ever. I guess the reason the topic has dried up is that there is nothing new to discuss and people aren't having many problems with it.

I have zero water washing experience, (not counting the Dr. Pepper batches) so nothing to compare it with except gravity settling of the soaps. The shavings perform better with settled BD.

Once you have settled the BD/glyc you can then transfer just the biodiesel over to a demething tank and evap off the methanol. When working with NaOH as the reaction catalyst the soaps drop out more reliably than with KOH. This is what Graham Laming based his washless, resinless wash technique on.

When setting up resin tanks follow the recommended bed volumes; 24" for Purolite PD206 or as close to it as your tanks will allow. I have lead/lag tanks and 19" dry colume in each as that is the max I can get with the expansion expected. I am on year two with the same resin beds and cannot see ever going back to water even though when I was doing it I had it down to an art.

IMO the best of all worlds is a deep bed of hard wood chips followed by a 10 micron can followed by the lead/lag resin beds and finished with a 2 micron can. What comes out is cleaner than tap water.
The wood chip tank I have butit has yet to be hooked up. Winter project.

HTH

I have used both and i think water does a better job and is easier to set up for home brewer, epecially if your only making small qaunities. If your are a beginer and soaps are really high then water is a better way to go(as long as your gentle on the first couple washes) but once you get the woodchips set up you will love it. The woodchips need to flow pretty slow compaired to resins. i have 2 55 gallon barrels full of woodchips and i only flow them at 1.5-2 gallons per minute and that brings soap from 3,000 to 150ppm then i run through my thermax and purolite. Drywash will increase your output of biodiesel by a lot, i can make at least three times as much now since i dont wait for the biodiesel to dry out.

Thanks, good info. I've water washed for a while but want to change to dry wash. I like your two drum set up. How often do you believe you will need to replenish wood chips? Did you make your own resin towers?

Thanks.

I make 300 gallon batches and use only chips, I'll never use water again, at this point I don't see any reason to buy any resin either, I also do the WBD, after demething I let settle for several hours then pump through a 55 gallon drum of chips with a little blue pump at full volume, it'll usually go from 1800-2000ppm to 250-300 ppm on the first pass, then it just recirculates till it is astm or below, right now it seems to take one drum of chips per batch, but I use the spent chips in my wood boiler so it's win/win for me.

Fab,

I can't wait to see your new set-up. Where are you getting all your drums of wood chips and what is the "little blue pump's" flow rate?

Also what kind of drain do you have on the drums of wood chips?

GCG

Right now the ship setup is not all that impressive It consists of a 55 gallon plastic drum sitting on a board on top of my wash tank, the bottom has a 3/4" bulkhead fitting with a short nipple then a ball valve then a 3/4 street ell pointing down into the wash tank, the top of the drum has a 3/4 bulkhead fitting in the lid with a 90 and a camlock, a hose goes from there to the little blue pump with valves to draw from the processor or recirc from the wash tank, I believe the hf pumps are around 10ish gpm.
I get my chips from tractor supply, they have hard wood chips for animal bedding, usually somewhere around $3.75 a bag, it takes two bags to fill my drum, over the winter we will be making large improvements in the chip system, the present system has convinced mr that this is a totally viable process.

What is this about wood chips? I'm using Eco2Pure for my first tower. Can I replace this with wood chips?

fabricator
-how much biodiesel do you loose to the wood chips? Well I guess it is not really a loss, as you recover it in heat. How long does this process take for your 300 gal batch? I had to start hauling water to wash my bio, the well it the shop is so contaminated with iron I can’t use it, and hauling sucks! Tom

There is really not much loss. I would say 55 gallons of chips holds possibly a gallon of bio, probably less, the length of the process depends on whether I have to change chips or not, if not it takes around 4-5 hours.

I've no idea what size these woodchips are but sawdust absorbs quite a lot of biodiesel from the first batch; I put about 150 litres of sawdust in my dry wash drum and that absorbs about 20 litres of biodiesel. But this amount of sawdust will easily wash 3000 litres so its nothing. Besides, the spent sawdust is fantastic for burning.

It is the best fire starter I've ever used.

Fabricator
-do you think hardwood pellets for a pellet stove would work in the drywash tank?

Possibly if you mashed them up, you need surface area.