I generally do not water wash because I have the dry wash system but I reprocesed some very poor quaility bio and when finished it was very cloudy. Well I added 15 gal of water to 75 gal of bio mixed and let it set. I then drained 15 gal of white water off the bottom. Looked like milk.
I still have another 6 gal sitting on the bottom I can still see and the bio is still very cloudy with about an inch of clear stuff on top.

So I am now down to taking out more than I added..........(by 6 gal.or so)

What did I do wrong?

my reproces recipe was 50 ml of methanol to 1 liter of bio and 5 grams of koh.

Mo

More details. How did you add the water? Any agitation? If so was it vigorous or gentle? How long did you wait before you drained. Did you save the drain water? Is there now bio floating on the saved wash water? It's possible that you have some bio going out with the wash.

mo
-your taking out water soap and any byproduct that was there, so the volume my be slightly more. this though sounds to me like an emulsion. when you water wash, for the wash, try using waaaaaay les water, say 5 - 7 % by volume, even as low as 2% for the first wash. without the water volume it will be very difficult to cause an emulsion. you may have to do an extra wash or two, but for me, this seperates and is ready to re wash within 1 hr, I pump wash, for 15 min, then settle for 45 min , then drain and start over if required. Tom

O.K. I'm back. Thanks for the replys. Here is what I feel is "the rest of the story".

1. I was getting bad information about the water wash from my tech line from the manufacture of my processor. I was told to use 20% the water wash.

2. I made a BIG mistake while doing the reprocessing. I figured I would need to add some water to help the glyserine settle so I added 4.5 gallon IMEADIATLY after the methoxide. So my theory is I killed my reaction. So it was like adding the koh without (or very little) methanol. This initial water did drain out with the glycerine. The next 15 gallon is the wash that is now in the processor.

Is there a way to fix this??? Or should I get as much methanol out as possible and dispose of whats left?

mo
-yes, demeth, and dry what is left, then do your repo, after drying, It's really hard to screw up soooo bad that the entire batch is wasted Tom

quote:

Originally posted by Biotom:
mo
It's really hard to screw up soooo bad that the entire batch is wasted Tom

But I've done it.