I tried a small batch last night in my appleseed. It was about 12 gallons of oil. I titrated the oil several times at 6, leading to a total of 11g/L or 500g of NaOH total. Before pumping the oil into the reactor, I heated it up to about 70C and then let it sit over night and took the oil off the top. I then got the oil up to reaction temp and added 2.5gal of MeOH with the 500g of NaOH. After addition of the methoxide, I noticed that not all of the NaOH had gone into solution, and some was left in the carboy (newb mistake). Anyway, I let the mix stir for 2 hours and then let it settle of about two hours. After doing this, I didn't see the separation in the site tube that I did during my first successful batch. I then drained everything out into five gallon buckets and put lids on them. I took a look at them this morning, after they sat overnight, and there was a thin layer of soap? on the top of the oil. I went to skim it off and noticed that the oil was now very gel-like. I was able to stir it back into a pumpable solution, but it was still very much like a gel. Is there anything I can do to save this batch? Where did I go wrong. Any ideas would be appreciated.

Did you test your oil for water before you put it in the reactor?

i took a sample and heated it up to 100C on the stove and there was no significant popping or snapping

I took a sample out at about 120F, added some more NaOH and MeOH to it, shook it up and let it sit for a few hours. There is definitely separation, but it doesn't seem as distinct as usual....

Lots of options available to you to save this batch:

You can reprocess it.

You can blend it with another batch, test and process as normal.

Or you can do some small batch testing to find out the amount of required to process.

There are so many variables your problem could be arising from any number of sources. What was your reaction temp (one of concern is are you using the top heating element in your appleseed?)? Was the reaction done in a closed or open system? Given the limited information, reprocessing it is probably gonna be the easiest to follow, just tedious/time consuming but rewarding none the less. You may make a little soap along the way, it'll settle out once separated and dried.