My Dad (who has been around farming all his life) says that both types of fence controllers are produced. He said that they may not make new controllers with the constant charge but he is shure they used to, as he owned one that was a constant charge and had it shock the crap out of him once

Wow I have just spent 12 continous hours reading this thread and the one about distilling methanol to remove soap with filtering. "Graham Laming, rock god of biofuels." Sorry Graham I wouln't feel right commenting on this forum without first paying homage to you and I want to thank you for revolutionising the way I make fuel.
That out of the way.
On to a more pressing matter, I really neeed to make Ants idea of useing an IBC to separate soap with KOH catalyst. I have a friend who understands how to safely make the device and who understands the inherent dangers though I need to give him some working parameters.
Is there a settled conclusion on how much voltage /current/ amps is required to make the IBC dream come alive. My first thoughts are to use a Stainless steel wire mesh matting roughly the size of the bottom surface of the IBC one for the bottom and one for the top. My question How far apart should they be? and will stainless steel be Ok compared to say copper. what is a good target range of voltage /amp so an optimum imput of electricity can be found My friend has plenty of knowlege on where to find electrical appliance that can be adapted for these purposes I just need to give him some meaningful figures. You guys have done fantastic and exciteing work and I'd love to contribute.

Hi treeclimber,

Don't take anything I say as gospel - there's a good chance I might be wrong in anything I propose! I'm just an average bloke, with my fair share of misconceptions, errors and a few successes.

Still learning and enjoying the process.

I have a soap related question. Looking at the GL 1day method, one filters the soap out with sock filters. With electrostatic, the soap will (should?) settle out. Is the process to settle and decant through a filter to another electrostatic separator and continue until you get through a 5micron filter? Or is it more of a one step electrostatic separate/drain off soap and you're done?

Keith

Hi Keith

I'm not sure yet - still not enough experience to know how useful this process is with soap.

I have 80 litres of fresh, methanol-free BD in a steel tank and have just started to apply 4kV AC to a 'hedgehog' electrode in the middle of the batch.

I'd like to have the soaps adhere to the tank and electrode, any remaining to link up into easily filterable clumps. In small batches of a litre this seems to be the effect.

I'll let you know how it goes.

quote:

Originally posted by CWyler:
My Dad (who has been around farming all his life) says that both types of fence controllers are produced. He said that they may not make new controllers with the constant charge but he is shure they used to, as he owned one that was a constant charge and had it shock the crap out of him once

Any ideas where I could possibly get my hands on one of them? I've nosed around here, but mostly all I can find are pulsed energizers, with the shortest interval of a pulse every second.

Perhaps a pulsed energizer could be modified to remove the pulse feature (A relay inside?) and convert it to a continuous-charge output?

The pulse may be inherent to the way the high voltage is generated.

Best to look for a contious one. A mains powered one is your most likely bet.

The pulse feature saves on battery juice.

Hi Keith

The 4kV in a barrel worked well.

I did a soap test without any filtering and I got 110ppm soap in the upper liquid layer, which is pretty good.

My control sample was still cloudy and obviously still had lots of soap, I didn't test how much.

Now, what I must say is that the soap is not firmly stuck to the sides of the barrel, it is like a cotton candy or cotton wool mass at the bottom of the tank, so any disturbance is going to swirl it up again. I'd guess the bottom 30% of the tank has soap clouds, the top 70% is sparkly clear.

But, it DID filter very effectively. My 200 micron filter filled quickly, my 10 micron was free flowing for around the 1st 40 litres, my 5 micron remained free flowing. (3 filters in series cascade)

So, I think there is some evidence of creating larger soap clumps, which can be snagged in coarser filters.

Next we need someone with KOH to try this, to see if it helps.

I will take a sample of this batch for testing at a biodiesel conference tomorrow - a free service being offered by one of the exhibitors. No idea what the test comprises of, but I'll let you know tomorrow.

quote:

Originally posted by GrahamLaming:
(SNIP)I will take a sample of this batch for testing at a biodiesel conference tomorrow - a free service being offered by one of the exhibitors. No idea what the test comprises of, but I'll let you know tomorrow.

Graham,

In lieu of someone being able to try this with KOH due to lack of proper equipment, and so as to decrease the number of variables, might I suggest that you try to obtain a sample of unwashed KOH-produced biodiesel at this conference? Surely there is someone there who uses KOH. Then you could try with the same electrodes, voltages, and so forth to see what the effects are.

Asking a lot, I know...

Could someone explain a 'hedgehog electrode' configuration?

Hi George

If there are any vendors with KOH at the conference, I'll get a bag. (Ant - got KOH?)

I'd like to do the whole KOH experience, with a few small batches first, just to get a feel for how it behaves.

Hi CaptnX
Sorry - hedgehog electrode is a home-made term.
Here in the UK we get plenty of hedgehogs in our gardens ... here's a young one ...



And I should have realised not all countries call them hedgehogs. And they aren't native to the Americas or Australia.

They have lots of spikes all over them.

So does my electrode. It is made with a group of around 50 stiff copper wires, each around 100mm long, joined at one end, and splayed out to form a spiky ball - like a hedgehog.

The ends of each spike have a high field strength, which encourages the soaps to clump.

For more about living hedgehogs, read here.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: GrahamLaming,

Thanks Graham, makes perfect sense now. So if Im imagining this right you put the one spiked ball in the center(horizontally and vertically) and ground to the metal barrel?

TurbinePowered I am not shure where to find one now, but as you are in SC I would check Tractor Supply, they would probably have one if there is one still on the market. Also might check ebay, you never know

No worries Graham I wont take your word as Gospel but I will thank you again for taking water out of my equation.

I have two nine hundred liter stand pipe stainless vats with heater coils which I pump hot water through to heat the oil. One is set up as a reator and the other I haven't put a lid on yet and use for bubbleing. I accidently processed a batch, catlyzed with KOH, useing your method. I had the heat turned up to 80 dec C and my bubbler broke and began bubbleinbg violently while I was out all day. I came home to find clean fuel with fine pearls of soap atttached to the sides and alot more on the bottom. I then decanted from the top to use the fuel. I had already done a water wash. However I beleive the soap precipitated alot more after the methanol had evaporated as I let the bubbler work by itself for a couple of days. The soap was very fine though to touch it it would dissappear.

Hi All,

WARNING: THIS IS NOT TO BE CONDUCTED BY UNEXPERIENCED UNLESS THEIR IRISH OR WITH YEARS EXPERIENCE WITH INDUSTERIAL COMBUSTION AND CONTROL ELECTRICS.

Graham your a legend, I could only get my hands on a ignition HT trafo 8000V AC 25mA and with 30cm gap I got the demeth bio to separate the glycerol in minutes. Now I just got my hands on a neon HT DC trafo but the lowest I can find is 8K with 10mA overload (what's with the 8k, where's the 4k hiding?). I'll get some resistors tomorrow and have a crack at soap removal.

I'll keep you posted,

Rob.

OK, my power supply came in yesterday, but I'm only able to experiment on WVO that hasn't been reacted. I wanted to see how well it separates water contaminated WVO. I filled a mason jar with WVO and then added 25% water to one of them. I vigorously shook the water jar for 30 seconds to get a nice consistent creamy solution. Then applied high voltage and observed. Unfortunately I'm not able to limit the current on my power supply and it's internally limited to 15 mA. For the first 5 minutes I could only use 1000v before it maxed the current out. After 5 min, the cream had settled about an inch from the top and I could use 2000v with less than 1mA current. After 30 min I saw good separation with 3 distinct layers. On the top 2/3 WVO with white clumps mixed in. The second layer was about an inch of white creamy stuff and the bottom had a 1/2 inch or so of milky water. It worked pretty well, but I really wanted a clear dry layer of WVO on top with no clumps. I'll run the test longer tonight. I also tried it on the same WVO sample with out the addition of water and didn't see any results after 20 min @ 2000v. I wanted to see if it would settle the sediment faster...no luck. I'm maxed out at 2000v, but it looks like I may get better results from 4kv with the water. I'll post pictures later.
Graham, have you tried anything on raw WVO for quick settling of sediment?

Hi Madmarvin

WVO can be trickier - especially if it has a lot of FFA, which causes the high current consumption.

You MUST warm the oil to around 40 or 50C , or it will bee too viscous and the small water droplets will struggle to fall thru.

Try heating and see if that makes it all happen faster.

Thanks Graham...that made a huge difference. I heated the unfiltered WVO to about 120 degrees F. Higher than I wanted, but that's what 1 min in the microwave does! The water dropped much faster and what I think was the emulsion layer previously in the middle was effectively gone. I had a pretty clear top layer (very few clumps) and then a milky white water layer at the bottom 25%. It works great for high water contamination. I tried it with unfiltered WVO with no water added, but didn't see any results. My hope was for the sediment to clump and fall to the bottom so I could have clean WVO at the top. Heated or room temperature had no effect after 30min @ 2000v. Thanks for advice. I plan on getting KOH so I can test that over the weekend.

Graham,
Excellent (brilliant?) news. 110ppm is pretty good. My ASTM stuff is at work so I don't know whether that would pass as-is. But as you said, it was unfiltered. 5micron might take it down further. With a definite separation layer, I wonder whether this would make a good candidate for a standpipe. Or would that stir too much up while draining? Since the soap settles in the bottom 30%, filtering should be quick. How long did it take to settle 80L? I remember you saying that soap took quite a bit longer. It would be nice if it was quick enough to use a setup like the one you suggested for continuous washing (hope this displays).



One might get a continuous flow of cotton candy out the drain. Wish I had a way to test KOH. That is the catalyst I'd like to use. Let us know how your batch tests at the conference.

Keith

Hi Graham,

I went out and bought a power supply so I could get some real data to help out. I can now test up to 6000V AC/DC 20mA/10mA

My last run was 5L of bio heated to 85deg C. to recover methanol on both bio and glycerol. I then used DC and took the voltage up until I got 9mA so 0.06kV completely separated all of the glycerol in 2mins with a 30mm gap.

The reason for heating both bio and glycerol together is at that temp the glycerol takes some of the soap back and we get full meth recovery. I've done this experiment today and will have the pH readings on Monday to back this up.

SO FOR THE RECORD YOU DON'T NEED HIGH VOLTAGE AT THE FIRST STAGE.

Now this is a funny one, at 80deg C maxing out at 6kV I only got .03mA and no soap separation using you’re been can experiment on 2L demeth/deglycerol bio after 10mins.

I've been reading about centrifuge pump's run with out the magnesol turning the soap into a paste, so I'll do my best to track one down and give it a go.

At this point I putting together a 5T/day plant but 3T of my supply is highly contaminated with diesel so I'm just filtering and adding ethanol to use as fuel. As soon as I've got my head above water I'll build the second stage and incorporate electrostatic separation for glycerol.