I was asked a few days ago to outline my production procedure in one place, so below is my current manufacturing practice.

WATER SEPERATION AND HEATING
Typically my liquid oil sets in it's 20 litre drums for at least 3 months before processing and this very effectively seperates the water and oil.
The day before I plan to use the oil I carefully decant the oil into 20 litre open top pails (about 15 of them) making sure any bottom dregs stays in the drum.
The following morning I take the tops off the pails and allow the sun to heat the oil.
If the day is cloudy I do not process biodiesel that day.

By noon (summer) the oil in the top of the pails will be at least 45deg c which is warm enough to process with no further heating.
Also, if I am processing tallow this is the de-watering step as well.

MAKING CONS AQUEOUS NaOH
I normally use the Cons Aqueous NaOH technique. So when it is time to start producing, I put 100ml water in a measuring flask and add 100g NaOH to it. I give it a couple of quick stirs and then set the flask in a container of water to cool.

PROCESSING

I process the oil in three HDP Home brew containers which hold about 21 litres each and one which holds 50 litres. These containers have a WIDE screw off top so you can easily reach into the bottom of the reactor if you need to.

I collect 2 litres of oil off the top of each pail of heating WVO until I have put 16 litres of warmed WVO in a 20 litre reactor.
Next I pour 3 litres of methanol into a container and add the prevously made Cons Aqueous NaOH and give a quick stir.
I then pour the 3 litres of Methoxide in on top of the oil, screw the top on and mix.

MIXING WVO AND METHOXIDE.

I mix the oil and methoxide with an archemedes type paint/plaster stirrer. This is very violent and thorough mixing.
The stirrers shaft goes through a small hole in the screw on top of the reactor and the chuck of the drill acts as a very effective plug for this hole even when mixing.
Typically the initial mix is for around a minute, and then as I prepare the next batch of oil I give it several more 20 second mixes.

This method allowes me to easily process 90 litres WVO in just a couple hours, but I have processed as much as 122 litres WVO in an afternoon with no drama.

WASHING THE BIODIESEL.

After producing my afternoons biodiesel, I leave the biodiesel set in their reactors for several hours and then pour the seperated biodiesel into the 200 litre wash drum being careful to not allow any byproduct into the washer.
I pour the byproduct from each processor into a seperating pail where the last bit of biodiesel floats to the top and is ladeled into the washer.

I use Biocruisers mist wash technique for washing. Typically I mist in about the same amount of water as biodiesel that evening and then let set over night. If the biodiesel does not show obvious clearing overnight, I wash it a bit more the next morning.

CAPITAL COSTS

$10- Ballance scale used in primary schools. Accurate to about 1g.
$15- assorted second hand containers, measures etc etc.
$2- Stirrer
$20- mist washing gear
$2- 200 litre wash drum.

Tilly SBC/IBA mass Production div

Tilly
I have the same setup 16 lt. oil 96 gr. lye 3.2 lt. methal-hydrate, but I never use water,
why do you mix water and lye first will this get you the separations from ester and glycerine faster? Or is it better for the bio, mabe it gives you a clearer ester when you use waist oil or what is the reason for it?
Greetings from Alberta

and the loss of production is insignificant.

Tilly SBC/IBA

It is just as quick to do it without water and the yield is better and the quality of product is the same.

The only reason for adding water is that you can get the NaOH to dissolve on the spot.

To do it without water, yet even more quickly, you need to start the day before, putting the NaOH in the methanol in a sealed container, and giving it about three quick shakes spaced several hours apart. Tilly must be too busy on a Friday night to do this.

My present method for getting lye to quickly dissolve is this: I set the plastic methoxide mixer pot into the 150degF bucket of oil. This heats the methanol and dissolves the lye in a couple minutes. Unfortunately is gets the bottom of the mixing pail oily.
Cheers,
JohnO

Certain alcohols have to be mixed at certain times.
Methanol and NaOH must be mixed during the day.
Ethanol and Dr Pepper are mixed on Friday Nights (and Sat Nights and Sun nights and Mon nights and...).

Tilly SBC/IBA Exerything in it's time div

[This message was edited by Tilly on 16 May 2003 at 10:07 AM.]

Neutral, would you post your process? I'm new and there is soooo much information, but its spread all over. Plus everyone assumes that everyone has a base of info. As a newcommer I don't have that basis. I would love to have acomplete rundown. I would a rundown on your processor setup, with connection details and maybe a diagram. If you don't want to post it you could email it to me. If you have the time I understand. Thanks all

Jeff
harpman@lewiscreek.net

Methoxide the easy way is an article on journeytoforever.org about the method Neutral's referring to, check it out.



I do El Cheapo biodiesel processing as well. I don't use a mechanical mixer for methanol mixing at all.

This kind of passive mixing of lye into methanol doestn' have to be done the night before, however.

I use 5-gallon HDPE jugs (we also call them carboys) and my methanol sales guy (a racing fuels dealer) pumps methanol right into the jugs. The jugs/carboys are very similar to the thin HDPE cubes that restaurants buy oil in, though mine are much much more heavy duty HDPE and are bought from US Plastics and similar dealers. they have measurements stamped into the side which makes them measuring devices as well.

I fill the jugs with methanol at the dealer (ie I don' t have to handle methanol, his 18-year old employees do), and when I start heating oil in order to make fuel out of it (using a water heater element in my processor) I do a titration and then pour out lye into the jugs. I seal each one, give each a few swirls (ie you don't have to pick it up and toss 35 pounds of liquid around) and set it down.

If I remember to come around and pick up the jug and swirl it once in a while (like maybe 6 times during the 2 hours my oil is heating), then the lye is completely dissolved by the time the oil is up to temperature. I don't pick it up and shake it around, just give it a swirling of sorts, so no major ergonomics issues.
I can see any undissolved beads of NaOH if I pick up the jug and look through the plastic on the bottom. If I've reached temperature in the oil, and there are still undissolved lye beads (rare) then I can just "agitate" the methaol briefly to dissolve the recalcitrant beads (by swirling the sealed jug around, or I sit in a chair, put it on my lap and rock it for a couple of minutes.) It always dissolves then with little trouble- and I never deal with methanol fumes other than for the brief moment when I pour in the lye.

The carboys (jugs) that I use have a small screw top lid with an optional set of female threads in the center of the lid. I punch out the plug for the optional threading on one of these lids, and attach a ball valve (or just a hose barb) to those female threads- they're always 3/4 inch pipe thread. Then when I am ready to make fuel, I just set the jugs/carboys on a shelf on top of my processor, and plug a piece of tubing (that also serves as my sight tube) into the hose barb coming out of the valve or the jug lid, and turn on agitation. The tubing is already attached before the cheap pump I use for agitation- so everything (oil/methoxide) gets a really nice mix going into the processor.
The carboys are VERY heavy-duty- I've been using the same ones for about 9 months now, daily, and we lug them to the methnol supplier's and kind of abuse them and throw them around, and still no leaks. Oil jugs aren't quite as sturdy.

Someone in Santa Cruz blew themselves up using a drill (in a particularly dumb manner) to mix methoxide, so beware of fumes and drills (and concentrated fumes from either methoxide mixing or biodiesel mixing). Tilly gets around this by having a small hole in his carboy that the drill plugs up well- just wanted to mention this since it seems that the same accident has happened to three different people recently. The guy in santa cruz got airlifted to a hospital with a specialized burn unit, he was burned so badly by the exploding methanol.
If you use KOH instead of NaOH as a catalyst, you have almost no excuse not to use this kind of system, because the KOH dissolves almost immediately. My boyfriend started out using gas cans as the carboys for this method, because he was using KOH and didn't need to see if it dissolved, as it inevitably did with minimal 'agitation' and time. He used some sturdy 3/4 inch tubing going into his processor, and found that the spouts of plastic gas cans fit nicely into 3/4 inch tubing as long as the whole thing was above the level of the fluid in the proessor. This won't work with the awful new-style CARB gas cans we have in California, I don' tknow if they instituted those in the rest of the country yet, but it will work with any container with a vent or breather.
jeep-style metal gas cans also take a pipe thread. And for oil jugs, you'll be losing the benefits of the direct plumbing, but you can probably make something work out...


Mark

[This message was edited by girl mark on 18 May 2003 at 11:50 PM.]