Folks, I am new to this forum and biodiesel and need some experienced help. Built my pocessor over the winter made my first 100 litre batch this week (first did 1 litre test) everything worked. Made the 100 litres and washed, so far so good.
Used 20% methanol tritrate 3.5 + 2.2 NoAH
Air dried for 1 hour.
Oil looks great BUT I just came across the 3/27 test and tried it. I think most of the oil dropped to the bottom and it turned cloudy. Went through about 15 pages of this thread and could not find anyone else with this problem. What do I do??? Is the oil any good? What do I need to do to fix this problem? It seems that there are a lot more experienced folks here that I need to draw from (Now and in the future!!)
Any assistance is greatly appreciated.

Darren
Trying to be greener but getting frustrated

Darren,

Your first problem is you haven't used enough NAOH for base. You should use 5 grams. You still should have gotten a pretty good conversion, so I susspect there was another problem with your process.

Describe your process a little better, how long did you mix after the methoxide was added? How much does your pump flow, what temp did you process at, how long after rpocessing did you test your batch.

Lgoan Vilas

Mixing time 1.5 hours
Pump GPM Not sure same pump girl Mark used in her appleseed processor(the little blue one)
Temp was about 100 F (I boiled off water but had some running around town to do oil was cooler than I would have liked but new kid eager to try my toy.........)
Processor is 55 gallon drum, mixing tank 30 gallon poly with wiremesh screen to hold lye and stainless steel pump to mix. It was well mixed no NoAH left in screen.
Mixed 1.5 hours moved to settling tank, started to drop out immediately.
If I did not mix enough NoAH can I add 1.5 grams per litre and how much methanol.

Thanks in advance,

Darren

Hello darren

If you wish to add an additional 1.5g NaOH I suggest you remove the glycerine that has settle to the bottom of the reactor. Mix the additional NaOH into 35ml methanol per litre of oil reacted and react as normal.

quote:

Originally posted by Darren Tooke:

Processor is 55 gallon drum, mixing tank 30 gallon poly with wiremesh screen to hold lye and stainless steel pump to mix. It was well mixed no NoAH left in screen.

Thanks in advance,

Darren

Does this mean you use a 55 g drum for a reactor and a 30 g poly drum to mix the methanol/lye ??

Is your reaction drum insulated ? tight fitting lid ?

How do you mix the methanol/lye solution into the oil ?

100 F is a bit cool for the reaction and will take much longer to complete.

3.5 g/l is not enough but I agree that it sounds as though there is an additional problem.

ReM

Darren,

I agree with Rem, oil needs to be hotter (I am at sea level and like 140f), or run much longer.

Also, it sounds like you might not be disolving the catalyst in the methanol before mixing with the oil. Is that true? If so, this could be a major reason for reduced reaction as well.

Andrew

Don't know how to cut and paste so here goes.

55 gal drum processor with lid. 30 gal sealed mixer with its own motor. Lye is put in screen inside tank and methanol washes over it from top until completely disolved.
Methadox is drawn into processor through motor on processor.
Yeah 100 F was a little cool but I was excited to start (not good)
I will try adding 1.5g lye and 35 ml methanol per litre of oil. Might be a few days before I can post results have to go out of town this week-snd.
Thanks for the input, I have nothing to offer anyone yet.

Darren

About
Jan Warnqvist`s test:
I am able to understand it can be ok for the triglicerids , as well but not for the monoglicerids and glicerids by itself.
How is this don in the test.
Thanks
Fredrick
Biodiesel Patagonico

Hello patagonian

As I understand it, the reaction occures in a perdictable fashion converting triglycerides to di glycerides to mono glycerides to methyl esters. If the triglycerides are OK then the Mono and di glycerides are very low as well. Apparently the reaction will never run in such a fashion as to having no triglycerides in the biodiesel but 20% di glycerides.

O.K. I followed the advise given here and reprocessed with 1.5 NoAH and 50ml methanol per litre of oil. Wow got serious additional fall out. So far so good.
Read here how rain water was better for washing so heated 10 gallons pured it in ( I have a processor and separate settling tank)and the family wanted to go see a movie. Ended up being gone all day. (Now I did think that the air pump was a little strong for the first wash.......)
Got home went out to the garage %^&&(*() milk. I am learning, knew it was going a little to hard but thought "It will be OK"
So now it is parked in it's own drum in the sun and I will leave it there as a reminder not to rush things.
Here is my question, have others had problems when they first started or was everyone smarter than I???

Darren

Did you pull the additional glycerine out of the mix before washing ?

Yes made sure it was all out. Once I got all my origional amount out I drew another couple litres.
Pretty sure I was too agressive with the water wash.
I am now insulating both the processor and settling tank.

Darren

Darren,

it is a little trouble to set up and takes a little more energy, but methanol recovery makes a huge differance. I had a lot of trouble washing, untill I started recovering methanol. Now it doesn't matter how hard I mix it. I get no emulsions.

Here's my basics, which I belive my settling time makes a differance also.

KOH 7g adjusted for purity+titration.
25% methanol, mix one hour after the methoxide is introduced. My pump mixes the entire batch every 3 min. Settle 24 hours, take off bio-Diesel. Recover methanol, 1 micron bag filter into wash tank. 1/2 water 1/2 biodiesel, then use a identical pump for washing 30 min. that makes the batch mix once every 6 min. Settle 24 hours then repeat

Logan vilas

Logan, I will search around for recovering methanol (having enough trouble right now trying to make biodiesel).
Once you mix and settle you drain off the bio-diesel?? I thought everyone drained the glycerine off the bottom, won't most of the methanol be in the gylcerine? Sorry if I sound like I don't know what I'm doing.
Thought everything was pretty clear to me until problems cropped up, guess that is where experience comes in.

Darren

Hi Logan: You wrote:
"1 micron bag filter into wash tank"
wich is the pourpuse & how do you conect it to the system.
thanks
Fredrick

Yup, I want to know what the bag filter is for also. If it to catch soap I am all ears as I recently encountered soap problems that I haven't in the past.

quote:

Logan, I will search around for recovering methanol (having enough trouble right now trying to make biodiesel).
Once you mix and settle you drain off the bio-diesel?? I thought everyone drained the glycerine off the bottom, won't most of the methanol be in the gylcerine? Sorry if I sound like I don't know what I'm doing.
Thought everything was pretty clear to me until problems cropped up, guess that is where experience comes in.

Darren

Yes most people drain the glycerine off then the biodiesel, after you drain your processor look inside and you will still see glycerine on the bottom walls. When your biodiesel passed across that it picked up glycerine.

I try to reduce my problems as much as possiable so I use a pipe droped into my tank to 1 inch above the glycerine layer and I take my biodiesel off before draning glycerine.

There is very little methanol in the biodiesel itself, but the methanol that is in it disolves the soap into a solution. If you take the methanol out then the soap os just suspended in the biodiesel and could be filtered out. If you are useing NAOH then it is easy and works well because the soap is a solid. If you are useing KOH then it doesn't work well because the soap is a liquid.
You should lookup GL's ecosystem.

Logan,

quote:

25% methanol

Out of that, how much are you able to recover, what batch size is used in your recovery and how long does it take you?

Andrew

quote:

Out of that, how much are you able to recover, what batch size is used in your recovery and how long does it take you?

Andrew

I don't keep a real close watch on it, but it is about 10 gallons for every 25 I put in. My batch size is 550 gallons. I use 135-140 gallons of Methanol per a batch.

Logan

Logan,

If I understand right, that means you are getting back 56 gallons of methanol out of your 140 used in a batch, is that right?

Do you recover only from the glycerine?

How long do you run the still to get that?

Andrew