This picture was sent in by a customer that is experimenting with dry washing with his BioPro.

Thought I'd share the pic...


More on dry washing is being discussed on the dry wash forum, but figured you'd all enjoy seeing what a whole setup can look like.

Link to the dry wash side...
http://biodiesel.infopop.cc/eve/forums/a/frm/f/5521001332

-Graydon

I just made my first batch of fuel with my BioPro 150 (smaller model then the one posted). I was looking into the Eco2Pure drywash system before I bought my BP150. Dose the drywash system speed the process up any?

Yes. Instead of it taking 24 hours to wash (well, in a BP 150 it'd take even longer than that if you don't catch it right after every wash cycle & drain it), you could wash say 40 gallons of Biodiesel through Eco2Pure in 2 hours (it's rated at 20 gallons per hour).

Not bad, eh? Yep. It'll definitely boost the production time....

-Graydon

what parts per million soap do you end up with after the 2 hours? And how long will the media last with the particular soap/glycerine content you started this 2 hour test with, do you know yet?

Not yet. Craig's kind of the guinea pig for this type of a setup (he knew that going in though) but he's getting a soap test kit to be able to start measuring that exact spec.

I'll let Chad or Greg chime in on what they're seeing on their end as they're also testing it too.

Eco2Pure is still at it's heart just red oak chips with some sort of absorbent in them (kind of like Quik N Dri I'd imagine).

I know there's been a lot of hype around it, but I still think it's just expensive wood chips & absorbent mixed in. The funny thing is people are really seeing good results with it, but I mean, c'mon! It's just wood chips!

What's funny is Filtertechnik (where it comes from originally) doesn't even bother to screen the chips really well. There's a lot (ok a TON) of wood dust that shows up with them. You'd think they'd at least filter it down a little to get rid of the dirt & fine wood particles before bagging the stuff up, but nope! It all comes along for the ride.

When you first run Eco2Pure, you have to circulate the first few gallons through it to get rid of the "fine particles".

The Eco2Pure tower Arbor put together has some filter media that sits in between the media and the tower, but they're still experimenting with it as well. (That's also why Craig has so many filters on his setup).

The Thermax rocks though! I think in an Eco2Pure and Thermax tower setup, your flow rate would have to be a lot slower (because you can't push that much Bio through Thermax...it's too fast for it). Thermax in a 6" tower is rated at 0.15 GPM, or 9 gallons an hour. So if you do one of these setups, you'd need to run the Bio through it a lot slower.

Here's how the Eco2Pure towers work...


I'll let you know what Craig finds out though as he continues to test it (Craig is the guy w/ the BioPro).

Also, here's some details on the Thermax.
http://www.utahbiodieselsupply.com/thermax.php

Chad & Greg have been seeing amazing results with the stuff....
There's a really good thread on the dry wash side where Greg explains the chemistry and mechanics of what's going on with it & why they think it works better than Purolite or Amberlite.

-Graydon

look, anytime you're using a 'dry wash' media you'll get clear biodiesel very quickly because it's easy to remove glycerine with most of htem. But it's not the same thing as saying 'OMG, It's only a 2-hour process' because a number of people doing waterless washing aren't really taking out all the soap anyway so you don't know if your 2 hour process is actually doing anything other than making your fuel clear.

Soap removal by washing gets you down to 45-50 ppm very easily. That seems to be the point at which a lot of water will fall out of biodiesel on it's own, which is part of the point of washing (to prevent contamination of your fuel tank by water from condensation , etc).

If you soap test and your soap was KOH-based, then 44 ppm should be the spec you'd need to hit to pass the ASTM sodium/potassium spec. If it's NaOH based I think the number is more like 65. Sodium and potassium spec is there for a couple of reasons , but it's handy that it corresponds to the level of soap that is easy to wash 'down to' (I'm sure they set it that way for that reason).

I haven't seen any data on what anyone doing waterless washing is reaching yet, since most people don't actually test.

"dry washing' till your fuel is see-through is NOT a test of total removal of soap, it's just a sign that you got the glycerine most of the way out, which is good, but not a sign of what's happening with the soap part of the process, from what I can tell.

quote:

Originally posted by Graydon Blair:
Yes. Instead of it taking 24 hours to wash (well, in a BP 150 it'd take even longer than that if you don't catch it right after every wash cycle & drain it), you could wash say 40 gallons of Biodiesel through Eco2Pure in 2 hours (it's rated at 20 gallons per hour).

Not bad, eh? Yep. It'll definitely boost the production time....

-Graydon

Graydon,

I'm curious about this too, as my friend Gregg is considering a dry wash set-up to mate with my BioPro 150. Where did the 24-hour figure come from? There's a little over 7 hours for the combined wash cycles (70 minutes, 2 hrs. and 2 hrs. respectively), and then the drying time, which is supposed to be 6 hrs. Right now in Michigan, we're having to dry a LOT longer...more like 20-24 hrs. due to the 55-degree temps in our work space, and high humidity.

Craig

Mark,

Yep. Totally agreed.

The 2 hours is based off of Filtertechnik's 20 gallon per hour (3.33 GPM) flow through Eco2Pure rating.

They claim it's supposed to work in a single pass.

I believe this is why Arbor Biofuels recommends running the Bio once through the Eco2Pure and then through the Thermax as well at the Thermax rated 0.15 GPM and then testing for soap levels.

At 9 Gallons Per Hour with a single pass through Eco2Pure & Thermax, it would take about 4 hours.

I know Greg & Chad (from Arbor) have been measuring the soap levels on the batches they run through the towers so I'll have them comment on it here...

Craig,
The 24 hours is what the BioPro 190 auto cycle for washing takes. The 150's run longer.

-Graydon

Stupid Question:
I just looked at the ASTM Spec for Sodium & Potassium combined.

The ASTM D-6751 is using the EN 14538 spec which states no more than 5 PPM of Sodium or Potassium.

How do the 44 ppm (KOH based bio) & 65 ppm (NaOH based bio) relate back to the 5 ppm number?

-Graydon

Through testing that was done by Rachel Burton a few months ago, I don't have a direct link but usually when this discussoin comes up someone pipes up and links it back to a thread I wrote about it at the time (sorry to be so nonspecific, Im heading out the door right now!).

I thought I remembered something about her testing it but wasn't sure.

I'd love to see it, that way I can also reference back to it...

Thanks,
Graydon

What should my PPM be running on soap on finished NaOH Bio? I just received a soap test kit from Arbor and my last two batches have run 178 & 184 PPM. It is being run thur a Thermax column.

The post I just made here says 65 for NaOH, I think.

That's of course if you're trying to match an ASTM spec. Or trying to match the results that you easily get from washing.

What I just said up there is that this seems to also be approximately the degree of soaplessness that lets water drop out of fuel easily. This is an issue that I care about with my fuel, only because I think that water gets into onboard fuel tanks and storage tanks, and have seen some problems with unwashed biodiesel picking up water contamination like that (that's in unusual cases, but you can't predict if it could happen in your fuel tank) so I don't want the fuel I'm using to be a water carrier.

Not sure if that all makes sense, but that's my reasoning for getting to 'fully washed' sort of specs. I do think it's great that the ion exchange and other waterless washing media do a good job.

There are drawbacks to ion exchange and other waterless wash media. Most people who are using it on a 'homebrew' scale haven't been testing anything other than 'shake a sample with water' which is a very un-accurate test. I'm glad that there's finally a soap test kit available from the dealers of some of the resins. We should be able to get much better data on what people are actually getting as results. The other side of it of course is that you'll see the numbers climb as the resin becomes spent.

I know that the Piedmont Biofuels industrial stopped using partial washing plus Purolite recently and went back to partial washing plus Magnesol (with a filter press, which sometimes causes them major, major problems when filters tear) for various reasons. It's not a perfect solution yet. Obviously there are huge drawbacks to water washing as well.

I agree....

I've really held back on getting excited about dry washing and even now I still think it should be approached cautiously until one fully understands how it works.

It's one reason I've really been impressed with the folks at Arbor Biofuels too. From the start they've had a really scientific approach to testing all the resins & towers they're experimenting with. I know that sounds like a commercial for them, but they really do approach it in the right manner. Heck, they had to put up with me for 6 months hounding & heckling them with questions before I'd even consider selling the stuff.

Eco2Pure is the newest baby on their end that they're doing testing with. It does look good, but I agree, unless you're testing the Biodiesel after it runs through the column for soap it's difficult to know how well it came out.

I know Thermax, when used right, can do an incredible job. One key thing with any of the resins is to get as much methanol out of the Biodiesel as possible before it goes through a resin tower. If you don't, then the methanol acts as a carrier for the soap to just sail right on by & out the other end.

The 5% pre-wash method can really help in this respect. It's what Craig is experimenting with with his BioPro/Dry Wash setup (so yes, that means you have to do some more work over just running the auto cycle on the BioPro's).

-Graydon

Just a quick Chime in here,
The Demethed BD we sent through the eco2pure was 640ppm soap pre E2P and it went down to 60ppm after..

and how long do you see these results, with that resin (meaning, how long does the resin last in giving results like this, and how many gallons do you put through it before you start seeing ending soap levels climb)?

That's really low soap you're starting with, by the way. I think ti's more normal to have something like 2000 ppm. Are you doing a 5% water prewash or a settling time after de-methanol-izing or something like that?

Ok another quick chime in.
We did do a soap test after running the BD through E2P(Eco2Pure)then through our Thermax Macro then finally through purolite.
We ended up at 50-60ppm, Started out with 640ppm.

quote:

Originally posted by girl mark:
and how long do you see these results, with that resin (meaning, how long does the resin last in giving results like this, and how many gallons do you put through it before you start seeing ending soap levels climb)?

That's really low soap you're starting with, by the way. I think ti's more normal to have something like 2000 ppm. Are you doing a 5% water prewash or a settling time after de-methanol-izing or something like that?

-As Legal Stated the E2P is not a resin,Its the wood chips with some molecular sieves in it too.

-We have not run alot of BD through it yet to get the numbers your asking for,We are working on that,
-We do not use Any water in our process,The samples used were demethed and had settled a day before we could run the BD through the E2P

-I would have liked to see the higher soap numbers to get better data on the performance of the E2P.

Graydon and Girlmark,

Quick note to eliminate any misunderstandings:

1) Gross Methanol removal is recommended for biodiesel purification however resin function is facilitated by the presence of some methanol. Gel type resins require 1% or more to function properly where as we have found that our T45 BD Marcoporous works successfully at the 0.25% mark but our testing indicates that you probably shouldn't go lower than this. However at this level the bulk of soap and glycerin naturally seperate and then you go directly to purification.

2) At Arbor Biofuels Company we consistently perform a methanol removal/recovery process combined with a 24 hour period of settling and have biodiesel that test between 450-900 ppm soap content prior to ion exchange resin purification. After passing through our columns the biodiesel is always <60 ppm (which amounts to .2 ml of 0.01N HCL with our soap test kit).

3) As Chad said earlier our initial test with the Eco2Pure indicated similar results however at this point we have only processed 100 plus gallons through ~10 lbs of Eco2Pure.

4) Pressure build up or compaction in a column of Eco2Pure seems to be the challenge presently. As the material loads and compacts either due to contamination loading or simply as a matter of gravity and it being soaked with biodiesel and it settling harder and harder; produces process flow issues...

5) We have what we believe is a completely better design for the use of this product but haven't got it worked out yet. More in the future on this.

6) Our testing of water content is typically 0.02% however our initial water content is less than 0.25% and we use Sodium methylate which actually dehydrates during the biodiesel reaction. Then after gross glycerin removal, coalescence, demethylation and 24 hours of settle time - we just don't have any water issues.

Lastly there is the issue of FFA content or Total Acid Number - we sell a TAN test kit so people can quickly and accurately check there finished product to ensure the column isn't exhausting.

However due to the macroporouses additional capability of removing soaps through glycerin entrappment (later in column life) total ion exchange exhaustion isn't observed. Therefore it should only be exhausted due to dissolved glycerin adsorbtion and soap numbers in the final biodiesel shouldn't be the problem but instead dissolved/total glycerin numbers...

People who are having the biggest problems with ion exchange are running high methanol concentration and high contaminate concentrations using gel resins and this is resulting in high FFA or TAN's for the biodiesel end product.

Additionally gel-type resins are being advertised as a dessicant product (an end all solution) and although they can remove water and methanol they certainly are not efficient at it!

GCG

How does this compare to just doing Graham Laming's process, by the way?

Most of the people that dry wash media is being sold to (plastic processor kits via Craigslist) aren't removing methanol first, from what I've seen.

If you can get similar results using just GL-1, then what's the benefit of buying additional equipment for media?