I'm working on getting the pieces for my first appleseed reactor, and I have a line on a propane-fired hot water heater. Is this a bad idea? I know that methanol is very flammable, but the only time there would be a flame would be while heating the oil, correct? So if I stored my methanol/methoxide in a different location, and moved it to the reactor only after heating the oil and killing the flame, would that be safe enough? Or should I just wait to find a cheap electric?
I think staying away from flame-heated systems is even more the environment AROUND the processor than the content of the processor itself. It would only take a slight leak of oil, methanol, a spill that ran the wrong way, or anything to be unnoticed and have the flame kick in while "safely" heating just oil to have the flame jump to that leak and start something else on fire.
I think the only safe way to use fire to pre-heat oil is outside and away from the processor/methanol/lye/WVO storage, then pipe the warm oil into another separate processor. There are guys who burn wood, WVO, WMO, glycerin, etc to heat their oil by doing it this way.
Whenever I have been able to get a free propane-fired water heater, I take it and make my Super Sucker larger by another tank! Its currently at 2 tanks and waiting for me to add the third to bring my Super Sucker volume to ~130gallons.
Location: Southern WI, USA | Registered: 18 May 2006
Hi Jon H, I'm in southern New Hampshire, but my wife comes from Chester CT (near Old Saybrook). Are you anywhere near there? We go down fairly often to visit her family, so I could pick it up sometime maybe.
Wow, perfect! I'm not sure when the next time we'll be down there, but I expect sometime in February. My email is brownhousechris@yahoo.com if you want to stay in touch, perhaps you could send me a phone# and I could get in touch when I'm down there. How much would you want for it? This sounds like it will work out great!
