So in an effort to boost my production I added more oil to my reactor than there was room for... as I was pumping in the methoxide it filled to the top so I had to stop. I had about 5 liters of methoxide in the container that was contaminated with veggie oil backwash... so here's what I did...

Total batch was supposed to be 120L WVO and 24% methanol (but the last 5 liters didn't go in)

I drained 15 Liters of mixed, unreacted fuel and let the rest settle

next day i drained about 30 liters of glycerol off the bottom and I added an extra 10 liters methanol to the remaining 5L methoxide and it back into the system, heated and let settle.

Next day- today- I went to drain but it doesn't look like I got any more glycerol.. I usually have about 35 liters of glycerol for a 100 liter batch, so i was expecting 40+ literes for this one... but I'm only at about 30.

My instict (based on some redings on here) says to add a little more lye (3g/liter) and a little more methanol and try to react it again. But hey, I screwd up already, so I'm not trusting my judgement at the moment.

Thoughts?

ski
-before adding any more chemicals, do 3/27 and see if iy passes. could be that the remaining byproduct is being held in suspension, this is often the case after a repo, but since you are using 24% methanol, I suspect the methanol is holding the byproduct in suspension. If you need to force the seperation you can add back some byproduct from a previous batch, this will mop up the suspended byproduct. Tom

Yup- after about 5 mins I'm getting a few droplets settling out in the 3/27...

Soooooo... more methanol and lye correct?? quantity?

quote:

next day i drained about 30 liters of glycerol off the bottom and I added an extra 10 liters methanol to the remaining 5L methoxide and it back into the system, heated and let settle.

One likely issue is not enough catalyst in this "stage 2" part of your reaction.

Also, in the post, you don't state any duration of mixing. Did this stage get mixed for at least an hour? If not, then you have lack of mixing as well.

HTH.

quote:

Originally posted by ski2liv:
My instinct (based on some readings on here) says to add a little more lye (3g/liter) and a little more methanol and try to react it again. But hey, I screwd up already, so I'm not trusting my judgement at the moment.Thoughts?

Seeing it did not pass the 3/27 test, I suggest that you try only 1g/Litre of NaOH rather than 3g. This was one of my early mistakes (reprocessing with 3g/L) and it gelled almost immediately and created a lot of soap.

If it fails again, you can reprocess agian, in small steps.

For future big batchs you might try 2 stages