I did ae on 4 batches now. Before, without ae, I passed 27/3 test flawlessly after 45 min of mixing. Now after almost 2 hours, I barely squeek by. I presume this is from remaining water after ae.

For ae I use 60% methanol, let it react, settle, drain, put back new methanol equal to what I drained, react again, settle, drain, titrate (usually about 2-3), centrifuge to get more water out, new methanol equal to drain amount + the other 40%, base process.

I know the oil is wetter now after ae. I was wondering about using less than 60% methanol to start with and then just reheating and redrying the oil and loosing the methanol. The other option I was debating trying to use more than the other 40% of the original amount of methanol.

Any pointers?

Thanks.

Two biggest mistakes I see with people doing AE are:

1) Not getting ALL of the water out of the starting oil.
Your feedstock must be dry.. absolutely dry.. no water at all.

2) Using low grade sulfuric acid.
I suggest 98% pure called "Fuming Sulfuric" and nothing less. It is nasty nasty stuff.

Thanks. My starting oil is dry for sure. Acid that I use is 93%. I've read conflicting things about that. Some say it's fine others say its not.

My AE works fine however. Goes from a titration of 45 to 2-3. I do it twice. The base stage has some issues though. My ae drainage is black. I can just tell when it goes from runny to oil.

I will have to try some 98% acid next time but you think it's the problem since the AE works fine?

wow from t45 down to t2-3 is fantastic! most of the water created during ae settles in the drainage! I find that using KOH after AE requires a two stage base process, with NaOH you can geter done using one stage. 93% sulfuric acid works, 98% is better. with 93% it is even more important to have dry oil since about 7% of that acid volume is water.

I will have to give that a try next batch. I've never done two stage base before.

One thing I'm unsure of:

Normally you put in 80% methoxide, mix drain, put in the other 20%, mix drain.

How does that work after AE? Since after draining that acid water, 50% of the methanol is in the oil already without the catalyst mixed in?

Thanks

when I used KOH I split the methoxide 90/10. not sure why but this always produced better results after AE.
what kind of yield did you get processing T45 oil with KOH? (no AE)

quote:

what kind of yield did you get processing T45 oil with KOH? (no AE)

quote:

How does that work after AE? Since after draining that acid water, 50% of the methanol is in the oil already without the catalyst mixed in?

I add additional methanol equal to about half the amount of drainage. I think Biotom has a formula for that ??

What size batches are you running ??
What are you doing with the drainage ?



Pictures of the Diesel boat would be great ??
I'd like to put a hopped up Duramax in an Eliminator.


regards
Tom

Ok, I'll try the 90/10. The highest I processed without ae was koh t25 I think. The yield was probably 60-70 and it passed the 27/3 but had problems with glycerin separating until I added water. The next batch was t50 and that's when I started with ae. The yield now is very close to 100%. Too close to 100 for me to measure precisely enough.

Just to do an example...

100 liters of oil:
I put in 12 liters methanol (60% of the original 20%)
Do the the ae
Drain 2 liters

This is where I'm still unclear. Without ae I would have 20 liters of methoxide. I dump in 90 percent of that, drain glycerine, dump in the other 10%

With ae, I would already have 10 liters methanol in the oil at this point. So, now I prepare 8 liters methoxide plus 1 more liter of methanol (half of what I drained)? Then dump in 90 percent of that 9 liters methoxide, drain, then the other 10%?

My batches are 40-45 gallons right now. I'm currently making a 200 gallon setup. The 40 gallon processor is nowhere close to meeting my demand. I got the drainage in a barrel right now. I was planning on dumping it into my oil wash tank. I pump wash the oil. Figured the acid would get quite diluted in there and the oil would separate back out. Any reason not to do that?

A duramax would be nice. Nothing but that 6.5 would fit into my boat though. It's a very tight fit. About 1/8" clearance to the oil pan. About the same up top in places. Would need a different transmission and v drive with anything else too which wouldn't fit. The 6.5 does well though. Pulls pretty much the same as the 6.2 scorpion that was in there. It was pretty easy too. Slowest part was welding up the stainless waterjacketed exhaust. It felt like I was buying argon every other day.

I'm really happy with that conversion though. Lost about 6mph off the top end due to lower redline but that's not important. We just wakeboard so it lives around 23mph the whole time.

The boat was pretty much my reason for getting into biodiesel. Fuel flow went from 8-10gph with the gas engine to about 5. We wakeboard about 250 hours a summer, so the savings are really good! This is my 2nd summer with the diesel engine. Now I just have to get my 200 gallon system going so I can keep up with the boat.

Here it is: