We just finished our dual 250 gallon propane tank processor (well at least enough to do a batch). It's a work in process and we really need to do a few more things before I post pics and all that good stuff.

After months of waiting for steal building's and concrete pads etc. to be competed we finely were able to pump oil into one of the 250 gallon tanks. Unfortunately it titrated at about 11. This is the worst oil I have ever had (x2). Imagine the let down.

Frankly, I didn't know what to do (and still don't). We decided to pump better oil into the second tank. This oil titrated at 3, much better oil.

We proceeded to make a batch and everything turned out great. We ended up pumping most of the glycerin into the tank containing the crappy oil and circulated it at 130 degrees for a couple of hours. After draining the glycerin we re-tritrated it to and it dropped to about 6.25. Still fairly crappy but a whole lot better than what we started out with.

We would really appreciate some advise on what to do next. The way I figure it there are different ways we can deal with this oil.

1. Do exactly as we always do and hope for the best. We use about 21% methanol and 6 grams per liter plus titration (Noah).

2. Use the base base method that so many are having good luck with.

Our new processor is much closer making it a much more viable option. Driving 8 miles to the location of the old processor made it impractical to perform any additional steps.

3. Do an Acid esterification on the oil to drop the FFA's and then perform a base or base base process.

4. One additional option would to mix it with better oil or retreat it again with glycerin from another batch. This is the beauty of two tanks sharing one pump with valves to isolate each tank. It's so easy to move liquids from tank to tank.

Luckily I am one of the lucky ones and after driving about 80,000 miles on B100 I have yet to have oil that has titrated more than 5.5. In the past I would just mix it with better oil to get it to a more manageable number.

I would sure appreciate any advise anyone has to offer. We will now use about 40 gallons of methanol per batch and mistakes could end up being very costly.

YOU ARE COMPLAINING ABOUT 6.25 TITRATING OIL? Just titrate and process. I have made good bio from oil that titrated several times higher.

If you are not comfortable with a single-stage batch, then just do a 2-stage acid/base reaction.

Thanks Chris.

I guess I am one of the lucky ones. Five is about the worst I have ever had to deal with. What makes this oil so different is that water does not want to settle out. Now that it has been pretreated with glycerin we will heat and settle one more time and then check again for water.

Do the acid esterification process on it (see the acid esterification forum). I consistently get 12-14 titrating WVO but I can get it down to 3-4 titration using this process. Really does not cost much more (extra electricity and sulfuric acid).

Reggie,

I suggest that you use the glcyerine/byproduct pre-treatment and see how that affects things. Particularly, the water content. Consider that the higher your titration is, the lower the water content needs to be for the base process to go well.

If you can, I'd love to see quantitative water tests and titrations before and after the pre-treat. If you heat and run it for 1 hr, I think you will see a big improvement.