I've created a monster...

[yaric008]

Okay, here's the story. Our mixing tank went awry on our last two batches, alot of lye got stuck in the bottom but we put in a little extra anyways so i thought maybe it'd be okay. We ran one batch, then washed it and dried it and it won't clear up for anything, not like our first batch. So i came to the conclusion that perhaps it didn't full react as it was just acting very odd like not clearing up and the wash water wasn't coming out 100% clear like our good batch did. So we had another batch right after that one going that the same thing happend with the lye but we had already methanol recovered this second batch quite a bit.

So... thinking maybe it didn't get enough catalyst i decided to put in a little more methanol and lye to help it out. So i mix up some lye and methanol and put it and and let it run for an hour, then let it sit for 12. Basically I have no clue what happend. Stuff settled to the bottom of the reactor that solidified almost completely and our pump couldn't pump it. So we took pieces apart and had to blow the crude out with 160psi of air pressure. Then once we got some out in a container it had these jelly fish looking things in it. They were clear globs of jelatenous jelly fish looking things. The weirdest crap I'd ever seen. So.. after we got it cleared and broke some stuff and fixed it and got covered in biodiesel and oil... we started to move it all to our wash tank. Everything was going good until it got to the end and all this crud started coming out then alot of glycerin started coming out.

So what the heck happened? Somehow it appears as if the glycerin was floating on top of the biodiesel and we managed to create clear jelly fish and alot of solidified hard gravvy crap at the bottom of the tank after settling the biodiesel. Everything just went to hell this batch...

Now to top it off we appear to have an emulsion problem, lol and our water pump broke for our misters.

[StorminNorman]

I never proceed to wash before doing a conversion test. The 27/3 is cheap, quick and simple and gives accurate results. Assuming that the titration was correct and the amount of catalyst and temperature was correct also, I would guess that the oil was wet and quite probably contaminated with a caustic cleaner of some kind.

Norman

[VD350]

I'm voting for water contamination as well. We have been doing some experiments with the Processing end of things and the most important number you dont want to screw around with it the lye. Usually our lye is around 1200g/42L so we always go a little more like 1250 just to make sure it reacts.

Just a tip, mix the lye and meth before it goes in and SLOWLY add it to the WVO (make sure its mixed up well). We had several plugs when we added our Meth/lye mix in, so we started slowly dumping it in and it eliminated the plugs. Also you need to let it sit longer than 12 hours for everything to settle out. Recommended is 18-36hrs, we let ours sit for 18hrs, any longer and it becomes very hard. Emulsions (if present) settle out in the drying tank.

Also you should be able to tell when the Bio is turning over after you pour in the lye/meth. Should turn more golden after 5 min or so, if not get like a quart of more meth and add in 100 or 200 more grams of lye. If it keeps the WVO color it probably hasnt started changing over

Before your done with the circulation of the batch do the 5% water wash if you dont alreay, keep the glycerin from becoming hard, fast.