so i have been running grease for about a year and i still have not come up with a prefilter system that is fast and that i like.

so:how are you prefiltering

Jesse,

I use the pump and wand we sell on the 'site, and pump right from restaurant jugs. I'm going to copy and paste something I've written on the subject.

Craig
Neoteric Biofuels


WVO -Waste Vegetable Oil - Getting It, Avoiding Bag Prefiltering by pumping WVO with the PipeLine 12V Diesel (sic) Transferpump and The Wand

Ok, here's the best filtering method as far as I'm concerned - simple,
quick, thorough enough.

All of the following assumes you're using decent oil. As far as what kinds of oil are suitable: anything that doesn't have large quantities of animal fats and isn't partially (or fully) hydrogenated will work, assuming it isn't contaminated by water or other foreign substances. That's why persuading the restaurants to put the oil back in the boxed plastic jugs it came in is valuable - you can see what it is - so look for the words "partially hydrogenated" and politely decline their oil if you do. (You could attempt to effect a little social engineering by guilt-trippingly pointing out to them that their oil isn't good for the coronary arterial health of their customers - I look forward to a day when restaurants using lard, Crisco or partially-hydrogenated oil will be at a competitive disadvantage since they'll be the only ones still paying to have their oil hauled away.)

If you have a Vormaxx or SVO Pro 232 or 233 installed on your vehicle, lucky you, you can use our pump and wand to just pump settled oil right into your tank - no bag filtering needed. The longer you let your oil settle before transferring to your fuel tank, the better, though. The pump and wand will also work for dumpster diving, but if you're dumpster-diving for WVO, it's even more important to let the oil settle - the longer the better - before pumping into your tank.

First of all, I persuade the restaurants who give me their oil to pour
it back into the 5 gallon plastic jugs-inside-a-cardboard box it comes
in. I currently get oil from 3 restaurants and they all get it delivered
in such packaging - rice bran, cottonseed and corn oil.

I make their life a little easier by giving them a big galvanized funnel – they’ve been pouring into a 55 gallon drum with a removable drum end/cover – a much larger target than the neck of a cardboard-boxed plastic jug, and a large target is nice to have when pouring from a fryer full to the brim that weighs about 40 pounds, full in this case with 5 gallons of warm fryer oil.

The funnnel I use give them will cost you $34.40, and you can order it from McMaster-Carr (http://mcmaster.com) or 562-692-5911, and it's P/N 4220T2, 384 oz. (3 gallon) galvanized funnel, and it's got these cool little feet on it that give it stability on top of the cardboard box that the jug's inside. (Your restaurant will actually have to pull a 2nd boxed jug up to the one they're filling, since the spouts on the jugs aren't centered on the jug - so two of the four funnel feet sit on the first jug, and two on the other one.)

I bring the oil home, and let it settle, if possible. (And sometimes, I don't have time to let it settle - my tank is low and I don't don't feel like purchasing any biodiesel or diesel, so I'll just use the PipeLine pump and The Wand (see next paragraphs) and pump it right into my tank as soon as I get home -and if you were on a roadtrip you could fuel up down the street from the restaurant.

The other advantage of getting them to return the fryer oil to it's original containers: you don't have to dumpster dive - unless you're on a roadtrip and haven't brought along enough WVO (and I can get 16 - 5 gallons jugs of WVO in the rear cargo portion of my '85 Mercedes wagon, behind the rear seat, for a total of 80 gallons, and that plus the contents of the stock 18 gallon tank is enough for me to drive about 2400 (!) miles on WVO.

(I'm in California, so I run our SingleTank system, which means I have WVO in my stock tank - and I can still run diesel or biodiesel in that tank, in any proportion with new oil or WVO.)

The PipeLine pump - the 12V pump we sell on the website - http://.biofuels.ca - is much more heavy duty than cheaper pumps, and less apt to burn out pumping oil in the winter.

I use the pump, connected to a portable jump-start battery - available
at auto parts stores everywhere, or Northern Tool, or Graingers. Using
this little batter allows me to pump and filter in my shop, but you could also pump nd filter near your vehicle using the pump's alligator clips connected to your car's battery.

I've made a pre-filtering wand out of a suction filter made for
installation in a fuel tank, and installed this filter inside a PVC
tube. The suction filter aka suction strainer, I got from McMaster-Carr
http://www.mcmaster.com/ or 562-692-5911 (Santa Fe Springs, CA) - it's their P/N 98065K42, sells for about $20, has a 200 mesh screen, which is 70 micron, and consists of a cast iron bushing that's 1-1/4" male x 3/4" female, with a pleated stainless screen over a stainless support tube, and the outer diameter will (just) fit inside an 1-1/2" PVC pipe.

We now sell The Wand, complete with 70 micron strainer, on the website for $79 plus tax and shipping.

The basic design is something Charlie Anderson at Greasel came up with.
Most 12V diesel transfer pumps, including ours, comewith a little suction filter on the suction hose, but the problem with it is, you've got to completely submerge it in the oil, otherwise you'll suck air, which, being easier to pump that
oil, means you'll not suck any oil, so that means you got to completely
submerge the filter in the oil, and thus that you'll pick up any crud
below the surface when you submerge the suction screen. His idea was to
enclose a suction filter inside a PVC tube, make the tube longer than
the length of the filter, so you're only submerging just the tip of the wand below the surface of he oil - thus avoiding the crud. Of course you need to slowly lower the wand into the jug as the oil level drops.

Charlie designed his wand for sucking oil from restaurant drums and
dumpsters, but since my participating restaurants give it to me in the
jugs, I modified Charlie's design to make a longer wand - one that will
reach *almost to the bottom of the jugs but not quite* and which fits
through the mouth of the jugs. The almost-to-the-bottom part is critical
- the crud - tempura batter, chicken skin (eeww!) or whatever - falls to
the bottom, and you don't want to pick it up with your wand.

can't resist mentioning that restaurants that cook with the animal fats, lard or tallow, are not harming their clients as much (if they harm them at all, which I doubt) as those that cook with partially hydrogenated veg oil. Only the latter contains trans fatty acids which are unknown in nature. Heart disease was rare until trans fats entered the diet.

I have a 55 gallon drum I cut a hole in the top so that a filter bag fits. My filter bag is a denum like blue jeans pillow from a sofa. I was told the stiching on sofas is very strong. it is also round so I cut a hole in the top and stiched in a metal ring from an old filter bag. (5 micron). The bag holds five gallons of grease (one cubie). Two bags will fit but I use just one most of the time and refill every couple of days or when I am walking by.

I made a heating element for the tank also. It is a water heater element from Home depot(less than $9) a PVC treaded pipe that fits into another pipe. One 90 degree PVC and PVC that is long enough to stick out the top of the 55 gallon drum. And an electric cord from an old appliance (mine was off of a vacuum from work.). Attach the wires to the element and screw that into the treaded pvc backwards and glue. I had to shave the end off to get in it backwards. I used a drumel. The treaded PVC is glued into the 90 angle and glued to the PVC pipe that sticks out the top, and the cord is in the middle.

I collect form my works so the grease is right out of the fryer and into cubies (I use the fine mess stainer from the restaurant also). I usually take 2 cubies home. I like to let them sit for 2ish weeks then pour them thought the bag in the top of the drum. I save the thick stuff off the bottom of the settled cubies for Biodiesel. Then I walk away until the next day. When the grease is about 40 gallons I heat it with the PVC heater. Usually a couple of hours although I once left it over night and it got real hot and the PVC pipe section warped a little. Then I let it cool to around 100-125 degrees.

At this point I have a second filtering system which is a 5 gallon restaurant bucket (the square ones) and I have two round five gallon buckets attached together top to top with a small hole in the bottom and a filter bag sized hole in the top. This just sets on the square bucket I have a $20 hand crank pump. Might updrage to electric soon. Then I pour it into 5 micron bags that hang in the two round 5 gallon buckets. At 100 degrees F it flows right in. Then I pour it into a funnel into cubies and put them on the shelf. If I do all eight buckets it lasts about a month. Some time I only filter once a month. Now I am 10-15 buckets above par and once a month filtering and making biodiesel takes about an hour. Maybe two if I am not in a hurry. I only make biodiesel 5-6 times a year for the last 2 years.

Robert

so, i am doing a combonation of the provided posts.

i dumpter all the oil, i do not live in any given area so i have not been able to astablish connections with local resturants, then i try to let is settle in the "cubius" so that the particuletes seperate to the bottom. i have been warming the grease up to about 100F with a water heater element, the pumping it through 100 and 200 mesh screans into a sock filter.

the problem with this is: i travel allot, and need to be able to build a new system .

any ideas? hopefully i will see you all at sol west in Oregon.

Our and APE is touring the west coast so iff any one in WA, or CA can help us with grease that would be awesome.

later

Jesse

quote:

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Originally posted by aperock:
...Our and APE is touring the west coast so iff any one in WA, or CA can help us with grease that would be awesome...
Jesse

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Check the "Biofuels Stations" website. NOTE: You folk that have extra oil at times ADD YOUR CONTACT INFO!!! to the list at the above website link.

What do you say about this WVO? Is settling by 5 hours, but is color is good? Could it make a good wvo to make a 80diesel/20wvo blend?

by prefiltering, do you mean at the collection site, or before the oil hits your vehicle fuel filter. after collection, i filter my oil through a pvc pipe,toilet paper and diatomacious earth contraption that is posted in here somewhere, along with pics and a diagram, search my posts for it. it will filter about 20 gal per day, at 10 psi.

quote:

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Originally posted by eloco:
http://clientes.netvisao.pt/mariat13/Wvo1.jpg
What do you say about this WVO? Is settling by 5 hours, but is color is good? Could it make a good wvo to make a 80diesel/20wvo blend?

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Can you tell me if this color of WVO is a good WVO or not?

Eloco:

Difficult to tell because of the lighting in your photograph.

It looks OK to me.

The oil I use is from Chinese restaurants, probably about the same colour.

Be careful about using oil that is too black, however. Also, make sure the oil smells OK. It should not have a bad or rotten smell.

Also, try to let the oil settle for many days, or even many weeks if you have time.

Good luck!

My wife got some WVO from her restaurant and I think it was to new. It was still creamy. The stuff has to get burned a little or it just is not liquid enough.

I make biodiesel with the really fatty stuff but this was 9 out of ten gallons. As opposed to 1 out of ten from my restaurant.

I sold my house and now have 20 cubies of filtered grease I have to take with me. Yikes! I might have to take the thick stuff back to work and dump it in the dumpster. Double Yikes! Giving grease back.

Bob

eloco,

That wvo looks pretty good to me. Some of the stuff I have worked with looked much more like bad gravy than something you would cook food with after just 5 hours of settling. Prefilter,dewater, and try the blend progression. 5%,10%, 15%, 20%, etc, until you hit a cold morning and have trouble getting it started. Then go 5% less wvo. We have a few folks around my area that do this in the summer on unconverted vehicles. Seems to work OK. Time will tell.