I am wondering if I am using too much KOH. The reason I think that I am, is because of a mess on my floor. I recently spilled some PHO mixed with regular WVO on the floor of my "lab". Being in too much of a hurry to clean it up it has sat there for a couple of days. As you can imagine it looks kind of "lardy" laying there on the cold concrete. While washing another batch, my cold wash water came out of the overflow pipe and onto the floor and camme in contact with the gloppy PHO. I didn't think any thing of it until I noticed tonight the some of that glop turned into what looks like bio. There is thinner clearer looking oil or bio setting on my floor now. Could this be? and if so, any ideas on how much to cut back on KOH? I currently use 7.8 as a base amount.

We were using 7 as a base number and had emulsion problems and cut back to 6 and have had no problems as of late. This cut back to 6 was the last step, we also went from bubble washing to mist washing first but still had emulsion issues. Our WVO is heated to 220F and filtered to 25 microns before processing

Freesoul

Are you able to pass 3/27? How much methanol are you using? What is the purity of our KOH?

lew ward,
I use a base of 8 KOH..
its almost impossible to use too much KOH..a long time ago..when I was learning and had problems..don't ask..I made almost all the mistakes a NOOB can make..then created a few more. anyway.. I have batch that didn't separate..long before 27/3 testing. so I did the only thing I knew I could..pulled a few samples and tried adding more KOH and methanol. any way at about 40G/liter it still separated and appeared to work..the oil I don't think titrated about 5KOH..yes this was before I learn AE processing..before I wrote 'the method'..'the method' the now needs rewriting

most likely what happened is some the glop trapped some bio and the water washed away the soap leaving the bio..

-dkenny

quote:

and cut back to 6 and have had no problems as of late.

Are you passing 3/27?

How much methanol?

Hot or cold water wash?

quote:

Originally posted by Andrew M:

quote:

and cut back to 6 and have had no problems as of late.

Are you passing 3/27?

How much methanol?

Hot or cold water wash?

yes

21-22%

was hot from a hose run from the house, now is cold until we get a water heater in our shop because we hooked up a dedicated water line