I made a simple column filter with a plastic trash can by Rubbermaid. SS screen in the bottom with 7 lbs of Eco2pure sitting on top of it. Used a plastic spigot at the bottom to control the flow. Filters 30 gals. of demethed BD in 1 hour. Cost less than 50USD to make.+

Knotwild, I pleased you`ve sorted out your filtering problem, 180USD seems a lot at first glance, but propper filtration costs money, so perhaps its not as much as it first seems.

I`ve not heard about the power steering pumps burning up, but to be honest I`ve not looked into it too far because as you probably know I built my own centrifuge.

Thanks for the link to the photos, the Bio looks nice and sparkeling.

ATB stumpy

Hello:

Has anyone tried filtration using sand?

What type of sand are you thinking ? presumably dry sand with no salt ie washed sand like the type used between block paving.

What are you trying to achieve ? the removal of soaps and glyc. I don`t think it will be any good for removing meth though as there is nothing to absorb the meth.

Try a small scale test with what you can get your hands on and let us know, good luck stumpy

I used to work on a vegetable farm that used drip irrigation and we had sand filters as our irrigation water came from shallow wells. They worked well, but I think they used sand that had been screened to a certain size (perhaps sand blasting media). The sand was in tanks and you periodically back flushed the sand to clean it. That means you would have to flush it and do something with the waste. Of course we were filtering something like 400 gpm of water.

I think it would work, but it might be a hassle. I also doubt it would get down to small micron sizes.

Stumpy: I hated to spend the money to buy the filter, but it really works great and has streamlind things. It only takes a few minutes to filter 80 gallons down to 1 micron absolute and would go even faster if I had it set up to take 40lbs of pressure. I do wish I had the talent necessary to build a centrifuge though!

KW,

We also use Sand Filters for various applications in Nuclear Power. It is industrial graded sand (silca) which has been totally cleaned of other foriegn material and sifted to a common size variance.

Sand simply acts as a very fine mechanical filter since for all practical reason silca is neutral or unreactive in most cases - it also has a very good tolerence for high temperature applications since it takes a lot of heat to melt.

Additionally it is cheap and very difficult to totally plug up, provided the size of the sand housing has been designed appropriately for the volume/flow-rate of fluid being filtered.

Unfortunately it isn't the best filter material for oils since (works great with hot gases) they tend to have higher viscosity and will also leave behind a thin film that will gum up over time if cooled and exposed to air...

GCG