I've successfully processed over six hundred gallons over the last few months and have saved most of the glycerol from the settling stage. Has anyone out there developed or know of a way to recover the methanol using basic equipment?

One of the problems with recovering methanol from glycerol is the glycerine foam that forms somewhere around 220 F, gets into the condenser and you get brown methanol contaminated with glycerine. I made a 15-gallon cooker from a junked gas water heater with a lexan window in the top so I could see the foam level and reduce the heat with the gas valve to keep the glycerine out of the finished methanol. One batch I ran, got the temp up to 340 F while still getting clear distillate from the condenser. Problem was that at such a high temp, the methanol was only 84 % pure according to my hydrometer. I'm guessing that the oxygen and hydrogen in the glycerine molecules were re-forming into water at that temperature. Just a guess. I added a vacuum pump to the still which drops the methanol vaporization temp by about fifty degrees, then the methanol can be recovered below 200 F. With the vacuum pump, I recovered 2-1/2 gallons of 98 % pure methanol from 15 gallons of glycerol byproduct. Took about five hours of baby-sitting the still, so it may not be worth your time.
Rich Clark -=- rrich@holonet.net

Ron -=- Guess I should have started by saying that you first need to put together some kind of still. Journey to Forever site has some basic info and links. Just a kettle to heat the glycerol so that methanol vapor boils off, then pipe the hot methanol vapor into a condenser where it cools down and becomes liquid methanol again. It's a very time-consuming process, at least with my hardware. Rich Clark -=- rrich@holonet.net

So what exactly can you do with the waste?? Just dispose of it?? It is still hazardous waste and would have to be disposed up properly correct??

Thanks
Boxingjunkie

I have just finished my 1st attempt at MR from gly and it appears to be quite successfull. I used one of my 50 g WH filled with about 45 gal of gly. I have a 59' plumbers delight attached to it. I just turned every thing on and let it go. I started getting a clear liquid out the bottem of the PD at about 165 F and at about 170 F it was flowing even faster. It slowly worked up to 180 F and held there for several hours as the meth came out. It is a slow but continous prosess. I started around 11 AM on Friday and shut down at 5PM just because I wanted to get home (my BD shed is 10 miles away from the house). By then I had already collected about 10 gals. I have it set up to go into one of my meth carboys, the kind with the vent cap. The carboy go so full the I hooked up a 2nd one in series. I connected a tube onto the vent and had it empty into the 2nd carboy. By 5 PM on Friday both were full. Monday morning I started up again and as the temp reach 180 F the meth started coming again. I stopped when the 2nd carboy filled abaut 1/4 again. I stopped because the temp had risen to about 190 F and I was getting concerned about the meth becoming contaminated with water. (I don't have a hydrometer yet)

I have 2 1/2 more bbls to de-meth and I am now using one of my old meth bbls to hold the recovered meth.

What is the correct way to dispose of such a waste? are there more than common sense guidelines?
If anyone knows I'd love to hear
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My Greenpeace buddies