The FOOLPROOF way to make biodiesel?

[tpendergraft]

I found this artical on journey to forever by Aleks Kac have any of you guys tried this method?

Foolproof biodiesel process?

[girlmark]

oh man, go rinse your brain out. Everythign in that article is garbage.

Acid-catalysed esterification is a good thing, though trickier than regular base-only biodiesel. ANd it depends 100% on doing titrations. It's a way of reducing the titration values of bad oil- totally pointless for good oil (which they recommend in that article) unless you like to handle extra poisons for fun.

But the Aleks Kac monstrosity at the journeytoforever website is complete, utter crap. THere's so much bad information in there it's hard to know where to start. THe reason I said 'rinse out your brain' is that the bad info in that article will actually confuse you about the biodiesel process- it's better to try and forget anythign they said in there.

Here's a forum devoted to the 'real' ways to do acid-catalysed esterification (acid process is a sort of pretreatment you do to clean your oil up a bit prior to making biodiesel):

http://biodiesel.infopop.cc/groupee/...rm/f/629605551

and here's just one of the many discussoni threads that talks about what's wrong with the ALeks Kac formula:

http://biodiesel.infopop.cc/groupee/...51/m/328607547 (you kind of have to understand what the titration is to follow this thread- here's my writeup of titration:
http://www.biodieselcommunity.org/titratingoil/ )

bottom line:
ignore, ignore, ignore that Aleks Kac article

Mark

[Spencnaz]

I second that assessment of that article.

I made a small 1L test using their method, it was drawn out, hazerdous (I mean come on, you've got acid with a pH of 3 or 2 and lye with a pH at the opposite end of the scale) and more effort and energy was required.

Trust me on this one, the base only reaction is so much easier for the homebrewer and a whole lot safer.

[tpendergraft]

Wow, I appreciate the quick response! I am actually doing the appleseed "standard" biodiesel process so I was interested in this other process just to see if it was better but it appears that it is not. From reading the article it seemed right off that it was more complex than the standard way of making biodiesel.

I have made a couple of test batches using some of the great resources out on the web in this forum and other's like it. I have also purchased and read girl_mark's book and it has helped to answer a lot of my questions. Thanks!

[Huff]

I've been using this formula with good success but the last batch did not go all the way. The coconut oil must have thrown the the ffa off (I have not been titrating). The resultant muc titrated to .7, so I hit it again with 5g/l of KOH and 5% methanol and presto. Lesson learned, TITRATE the oil first. I feel now that there is not enough base added to the Foolproof method. Instead of removing the heat after the first hour, I leave it 50C for the full two hrs while mixing (via pump).