Hi,
Got a quick question.
I need to transport my upflow system this week.
I picked up a used Kerosene tote, 330gal and in perfect shape.

That is, except for the varnish in the bottom.
I poured some B-100 in it to clean it and was pretty sticky. got a lot of it clean, but it really stinks bad.

There was 5 gallons of rotten K-1 in it. the bottom only has a thin sticky orange film. It is minimal.
It had a lid.

Q; Will this affect my good WVO? Long or short term? I'd like to step up to 330gal since the 275 IBC is totally full anyway.

TIA
Brian

I would use it. If you could get some stale gasoline that would likely dissolve the rest out.

Thanks Mr. galt.

I have to shuffle it all in my 2 pickup trucks.
I'm actually moving to another home and and re-setting up everything.
(I hope to be processing BD in 2 weeks- Finally!)

The 330 IBC will be the transporter. I was just hoping I wouldn't contaminate the oil. It will be in there for less than one day.

I'll look for some stale gasoline before I make it the upflow vessel. Wouldn't good gas work?
Or even lacquer thinner? I do have a place to dispose of it.

Thanks for the quick reply.
Brian

quote:

Wouldn't good gas work?
Or even lacquer thinner? I do have a place to dispose of it.

If gasoline or paint solvent does not remove it then it's less likely to be a problem for oil storage.

John galt, while I have your attention, what am I in for when I go to switch my 55gal cold upflow portion of the system?

I'm planning to suck the drum out from the top with my IR diaphragm pump with clear tubing.
It still puts out great clear gold oil, but I suspect the lower I go, the wetter and whiter the oil will get. It enters the 55 close to 10 gallons from the bottom.
It is a blue poly drum.
Will using a white one show the difference from wet/sediment to dark dry oil?
Right now its a mystery as to how exhausted it is.
Brian

quote:

Will using a white one show the difference from wet/sediment to dark dry oil?

yes, I expect it will.

All my IBC's are white/ translucent and you can definately see the dividing line. The advantage to this isn't as great as one may think.

I have found when trying to drain the slop rather than the layer being drained off to the oil, the slop comes out closest to the tap and then sucks a " Hole" in the clean stuff and then that comes through with traces of contamination.

If you pump from the top too close ( but still some distance from the crud layer) the crap gets drawn up into the clear oil.

I made a fitting that goes over the end on my plastic pickup wand that reverses the draw from the pipe so the thing sucks from above the end of the pickup only. It works pretty good in helping get as much separation from the 2 layers as possible.

Without that, I used to end up wasting quite a bit of good oil as you have to leave a buffer zone to make sure you don't pull the crap into the good stuff.

I spose if you use cascade settling you could add this all back to the first tank and then the larger layer of crud would be easier to remove having a larger percentage of the overall tank depth.

Hi DCS,
My totes are white translucent as well.
I'm thinking of using a white drum instead of the blue one when I move.

See here;


I might just try to suck out the muck from the bottom first till I hit better oil.
Then use the better oil to restart/purge the new drum.

The tote took all winter to fill- since Thanksgiving- and is very dark top to bottom.

I understand what you are saying pretty much about turning up the intake to 'skim' the top.

I just don't like the opaque drums for anything but storage. The carboy funnel takes like 15 minutes to drain. If I could see separation, I would use it on up to 45-50 gallons and then discard all the sludge at the latest point.

I had an idea; I wonder what 5 gallons of raw glycerol in the bottom of the 55gal drum would do for snagging water upon WVO entry to the bottom? Any opinions on that?
Perhaps I shouldn't mess with what seems to be working well.

Thanks guys, I'm excited to finally set the plant up at the new place. I'll put pictures up at the picture site when I do.

Brian

quote:

Originally posted by Weldshop:

I had an idea; I wonder what 5 gallons of raw glycerol in the bottom of the 55gal drum would do for snagging water upon WVO entry to the bottom? Any opinions on that?
Perhaps I shouldn't mess with what seems to be working well.

I have done 5 gal test batches on this and found it to work quite well. The Glyc separates out the crap very effectively, lowers the oils titration and makes it very clean on top.
The separation is very distinct.

I have a bio maker friend that has a plentiful source of rather substandard oil and he throughly mixes it with the last batch of glyc he made, settles it out for a couple of days and the end result oil is very nice indeed and many titration points lower as well.

Yep,
The more I think about it, the better it sounds.

Maybe more like 10-20 gallons of gly.
the down tube ends at the 10 gallon mark.
It's marked in the picture.

This tote is exclusively from one source of very good oil to begin with. Titrated around 2g NaOH.

I have another source of less desirable oil I can try this with.
It takes them 6 months to fill a 55 gallon drum. I find the cap off and large food items and bits in it. and it really stinks.
I can keep it separate and just do a drum to drum upflow. If it were not a church rescue mission who called me on a referral, I would have dropped them by now.
So it's worth a shot.
Thanks, DCS.

Brian