quote:

Originally posted by johno:

quote:

If it smells anything like vegetable oil use it?

Yes, exactly. Even oil that is starting to smell like paint will make good biodiesel, but it may have a short storage life, and TDi owners might want to actually compare viscosity with fresher BD.

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Originally posted by kd460:
Just wanted to throw my 2 cents worth in. When I was new into biodiesel, I was getting frustated with the wash and dry process.

I now wash using the mist bubble drain, mist bubble drain method and it works well for me. I also hated dumping out water that still had "cleaning potential". The bubbling method is timing freindly. I mist when I home, I bubble when I am sleeping or not at home. It works well. Use a timer on your bubbler and you can include some settling while you gone as well.

As far as drying is concerned. I had trouble with bubble drying especially when I used the same tank for washing that I used for drying. Seems like I could never get all of the water out without first removing all of the bio and then cleaning out the residual water then put the bio back in to dry.

Now I use a separate dry barrel. I wash my bio using a standard stand pipe wash barrel, then when wash water comes out clean, I let the bio settle for a few hours, then it gets transferred to a drying barrel. It is an upside barrel with a pump. In the center of the barrel towards the top I use a cookie sheet that is suspended near the top.

The bio gets pumped via external piping to the cookie sheet where it then flows accross the cookie sheet. The bio is now a thin layer flowing over the sheet and it just cascades over the sides of the cookie sheet that is centered and suspendend inside the upper portion of the barrel.

I also have a cheap $6.00 5 or 6 inch fan that blows into the barrel and the airflow comes in direct contact with the thin layer of bio that is flowing over the cookie sheet. It dries the bio quickly.

I originally sprayed the bio inside a barrel with a fan blowing on the sprayed fuel, I found a thin layer of bio covering just about everything with 10 feet of the drying barrel inside my shop. It seems some of the mist would get suspended in the air and blown around by the fan. Did not seem very safe or very clean.

I also liked the separate barrel for wash and dry as I can have one batch in the processor, one in the wash barrel, and one in the dry barrel. So simple storage as well. The external piping is flexable pvc tubing to it makes a great nozzle for pumping into my truck or fuel container when all dry. I also have just a simple 20 micron automotive oil filter inline on that flex tubing so all of the bio that is pumped while drying runs through that filter continously. KD