Did anyone buy a extra hot water tank to use for boiling off the methanol from the bi products? I'm new to this and almost ready to start making bio.
jbird_71

Buy? This crowd? I doubt it. In all seriousness though, my plumber's delight condensor has 2 inputs for the very same reason that you are thinking. And I do have an old air compressor tank for distilling off the methanol from the glycerine ---- just haven't got around to hooking it up yet.

I bought one. I just didn't buy a NEW one. $20 for a 30 gallon tank.

-Jim

I ned to upgrade my recovery still to be able to hold a greater volume of product. the one I have is great for subsequent soap making but inadequate for getting at all the methanol I have in the accumulating mountain of cubies.
This year though, I get a soap making business off the ground for real (I sell some as is but now I want to take that a couple steps further) and this will need a better recovery system.

I use my appleseed reactor as my still using a plumber's delight condenser. After processing my BD, I drain the glycerine. I fire up the heater and the pump and bring up to 140F. At that point I inject air into the reactor using an aquarium pump with air hose running through the center of a cork (home depot or lowes) that I drilled out to fit the hose and stick it into the port that is normally my vent. I open the valve to my condesor and keep the heat going. In an "80 gallon" WH with 50'ish gallons of biodiesel, I start to see some reall methanol flowing at around 160F BD temp and 145F head temp. It takes me 12 hrs + to remove most of the methanol. This brings it down to a level that does not produce enough methanol vapor to be explosive, even when I empty the reactor at 160F (BD temp). I don't stand around and breathe it, but it won't blow up. It takes only a few hours of recirculating the biodiesel in my wash tank at this temp to evaporate all of the remaining methanol and start scooping soap off of the top.

All-in-all, out of the 9 gallons of methanol I add to my 50 gallons of oil (18% methanol) I can recover 1.5 gallons of methanol from my still. This is very close to the max amount I could possibly recover. Of the 9 gallons, 6 gallons is consumed in making biodiesel, 1.5 gallons stays in the glycerine, and 1.5 gallons stays in the BD. I think it's a pretty good system.

Later, when I've amassed enough glycerine, I fill the reactor with 50 gallons or so and go after the methanol in there. I do not use a prewash, so I'm not worried about water in my methanol. I just reuse in the next batch.