Cripes-a-mighty! I just did a titration on my oriental rest. oil for the first time and it blew me out of the water - 10! I've collected about 110 gal. of this sweet-n-sour smelling stuff (its a mix of soy and peanut oils). All my other oil usually hits 4 at the hightest but generally around 3. I havn't made any BD with the 10 oil yet.

Based on discussions seen in this forum, would adding glycerin help to lower it to a more reasonable starting point or is there a better way to make this oil more titration friendly?

You can try the glycerin treatment to see if it helps or you could go right to the acid/base process. It can be done single stage or two stage base/base but titration of 10 is a bit iffy, especially if you use NaOH.

Ken

I would definitely try the glycerol pretreatment. In my experience it lowers a high titrating oil significantly. It also allows you to use less methanol in the 2nd stage.

I've done 12.5 using KOH in a single-stage base reaction. Make sure your oil is bone dry. Right before adding your methoxide, add about 5% (by volume) of gylcerine (with methanol still in it) to your WVO. Then add the methoxide as normal right away. Process as normal.

You'll get more glycerine back because of the extra you put in, but it will take almost all of the soap you create and make washing much easer as well as help to ensure a good split.

Bunk / Eurocab / cfunderburg - Thanks for your advise. I'll read up on the acid/base process to get a little more familiar with it. For the time being, I'll have to try the glycerin treatment - seems to be something I can more readliy accomplish at this point.

Bunk - I will be using KOH. Is that the main purpose of using the acid base method - to better react high titrating oil - or is/are there other reason(s) as well?

Thanks again.

In the typical base only reaction, the higher the titration number the more soap you will make during the reaction. Converting the free fatty acids to soap is how we get rid of them. That's the purpose of the titration amount of catalyst.
KOH soap remains liquid to a much lower temperature than NaOH soap. If you process oil with a very high titration number using NaOH there is a chance of the excess soap in your reactor turning the whole batch to a gloppy gel. KOH is far less likely to create the gloppy gel.

If you do an acid esterification stage you are turning the free fatty acid into biodiesel instead of soap. It's an extra step in processing but the yield is higher and the soap glop problem is avoided.

Ken

quote:

Originally posted by 67V35er:
Cripes-a-mighty! I just did a titration on my oriental rest. oil for the first time and it blew me out of the water - 10! I've collected about 110 gal. of this sweet-n-sour smelling stuff (its a mix of soy and peanut oils). All my other oil usually hits 4 at the hightest but generally around 3. I havn't made any BD with the 10 oil yet.

Based on discussions seen in this forum, would adding glycerin help to lower it to a more reasonable starting point or is there a better way to make this oil more titration friendly?

10 ain't bad.
I'm making BioD out of titration of 19 right now.
Just pretreat and your good to go!

I use my soda ash/salt water method. Basically "soaps out" the FFAs and lowers the tiration to about 1.
I was going to try the glycerine method but my WVO was as dark as my glycerine. I like to see the distinctive line in my sep. tank.