I am new to making bio diesel(I don't even have a set up yet)but in trying to decide what to build and how, I came across the threads talking about centrifuges for cleaning. As far as I can remember no one has come up with a design to make one cheap. Since cheap is my middle name I set out this afternoon to build one with what I had at hand around the house. This was my design sketch.

Centrifuge.bmp (1,229 KB, 458 downloads) diagram

I didn't invent this design I simply came up with what materials I was going to use in order to make this design work for me so i wouldn't have to shell out $500-1000.

My next task was to build on small scale to test my idea from what i had around the house. This is what I had. 1 vacuum cleaner motor.
1 old cat litter pan.
1 tuperware container with lid.
1 piece of pvc pipe.
1 tube of 5 min. epoxy
The folowing pics are what i came up with

img003b_(4).jpg (64 KB, 329 downloads)

I forgot to put the lid on the center tuperware piece which I had to cut a hole in the middle of it big enough to let out the cleaned oil and let in the fill pipe.
Please let me know what you think.

I think you are going to make a mess in the shop.
If you turn the plastic over a few hundred rpm's full of oil....... If you try this, make a video so we can see what really happens.
Good luck be Safe.


Ps, over on the svo side there are a lot of posts on centrifuges .
Welcome to the forums.
Jammer

Jammer your probably right, but the one made of all the plastics that I took that pic of was more to prove to my self that the design worked not so much a working everyday model. I will try it using more sturdy materials, also it did work for the small amount of oil I tried.

Sil:
We use to run WVO from a local seafood place that changed the oil twice a day, but were cut off from that source. The oil we get now is pretty bad with lots of fat and particulate that will clog a filter in 6 seconds. I want to make one of these:
http://www.dieselcraft.com/oilentry_wvo.html
I am sure it can be done for less than 3K and on a larger scale.
Let us know how yours works out...

i was thinking about this last night and a motor attacked to a car wheel , bolted on lik any car wheel , add a plate in thye bottom to seal it up and then a lip around the top.. take it to the tire balancing place and have them balance the rim for you.. then build a case around it to capture the cleaned oil.. simple to build cheap and readily avalable parts for the most part..
biggest thing on a centrifuge is making sure its well balanced , if not .. they can kill you..

here are the parts i was thinking of .. a 4 bolt hub from a gokart axle , electric motor with proper sized shaft for the go kart wheel hub, then a 13" front wheel drive car wheel .. there offset is on the outside so this would be the bottom of the centrifuge, add a plate of steel welded into the bottom and a lip around the top edge.. over 1500 rpm and you'll be filtering great at a 13" bowl.. faster the better the filtering it will do, id think a 2 hp motor would do this just fine.