According to Dana Linscott, the water will drop out much better after you have filtered the oil. I don't think a repeated heat/settle cycle will help as much as filtering the oil.

I do a bulk filtration (paint screen + 200 micron) and heat it more for the flow rate as I then pump it through a series of five bag filters. Then I again heat it overnight to drop out any water.

I have my water heater elements mounted to the bottom of the drums. No leaks so far. I fear the round surface of the side of the drum would invite leaks.

Using the inverted drum setup, I have two drains. One is on the bottom for water, the other with a 5" standpipe. I don't always drain off the water first as my primary source has very little water. A clear suction hose will alert you if there is water... watch for the milky emulsion.

Has anyone tried the 'over the side' spear setup where the water heater element is mounted to a PVC shaft. That way we don't have to drill into the bottom. I don't like poking holes in vessels. No holes, much less potential for leaks.

Todd T

 

Ok,

I'll give that a shot. I'll filter the oil first then take out the water. When I was collecting from the source I didn't have any milky stuff, although this other source yesterday when I was collecting I noticed just a pinch (less then a cup).

I can't wait till the filter bags show up.

I've been looking for the paint screens specifically for 55 gallon drums. They seem like such a rip off when bought individually. The only cheap prices I see is when buying 15 at a time.

I think I'm going to mount the water heater element to a pipe and just stick it down just a couple of inches off the bottom of the drum. That way I have peace of mind with leaks!

You mentioned a series of 5 filters; what are they?

200, 100, 30, 5, 1 ?

Thanks!

-Randy

 

One important thing to remember when using the hot water element is to make sure the oil is above the element, ( keep it towards the bottom ) And I don't leave it alone when heating, If it IS NOT summersed totally the potential of the element catching the oil on fire is HIGH! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/eek.gif
Somewhere I read a post from Dana Linscott how he was testing them for fire potential and it will catch fire.

 

[ QUOTE ]
One important thing to remember when using the hot water element is to make sure the oil is above the element, ( keep it towards the bottom ) And I don't leave it alone when heating, If it IS NOT summersed totally the potential of the element catching the oil on fire is HIGH! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/eek.gif
Somewhere I read a post from Dana Linscott how he was testing them for fire potential and it will catch fire.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yup, that's good advice. I seen that in some other forums regarding the element with it's potential.

I've read a 4500 watt element @ 120v will heat plenty in about an hour, so just for extra precaution I'm fixin to find a timer that'll handle 1200 watts or so.

I wonder if a thermostat could help as well. I'll find out plenty when I head off to lowes in a little while.

In time I'm going to try 12v 600watt heating elements I found for about $30 a pop I believe.

Biodiesel --->> a way of life.

-Randy

 

What I am gong to try:

1) put a fitting 2.5inches or so on-center from the bottom of my 55 gallon drum for the hot water heater element.

2) prefiltration before it even goes in to the barrel through metal window screening and cheese cloth

3)I heat and settle for at least a couple days.

4) Then I let it trickle through a 6" stand pipe ( I put the element cose to the stand pipe) through a filter of some sort to another barrel below it. I would have the element set on a timer and set the flow slow enough that it will stay on for most of the draining.

I figured this way the oil will stay real hot and loose to go through the filter. Any ideas on a filter to use or if this is likely to work? For those of you who use bags how to you fix them to your barrels?

 

Tell me what is a stand pipe? I've seen it mentioned twice now and I still don't know what a stand pipe is.

As far as the filter bags go, from what I've seen; people make a stand and hang it over the barrel as they pump it through.

...just came back from picking up another drum, stopped at a ma and pa place and they said take it, I don't care!

-Randy

 

A standpipe is a pipe that "stands" above the bottom of the tank. This is done so you can drain the fluid above the standpipe (WVO) and leave the fluid under the standpipe (water/crud).

 

I've seen Dana's home setup for this and I've also seen a really big "heat and settle' de-waterer. Some sticking points:

use lots of insulation on your drum. It works best if it stays hot for many hours. However, if you just keep the heating element on all that time, you create convection currents above the element which stir the water right back up into the oil.


gloppy stuff (ie fats or hydrogenated which not everyone's WVO conversion can handle) has a harder time letting the water settle through, so it's really important that it is able to stay liquid using insulation. Heat it higher at first so it stays hot longer if necessary.

be sure and learn how to test for water in your oil so you know if it's working or not:


www.biodieselcommunity.org/testingoilforwater is one crude test, Dana uses a little ladle and a propane torch or somethign like that. ALways test the same size sample and same size pot for the test, so you always see the water (steam) bubbles under the same conditions so you know what to compare it to.

Mark

 

If I use a filter bag how do I keep the oil hot, or even warm with the bag just whistling in the wind? I've seen the canisters for them but can't justify the $300-$500 for them. Any suggestions?

 

For a couple of dollars, you can make a stand for the filter bags with 4" PVC pipe. The only catch, is you need to order the 4" diameter bags and not the 7" diameter bags sold by companies like Greasel.

My planned set up is to filter through pantyhose(gets the really big junk)as I put the oil into the settling barrel. Then heat and settle the oil. The settling barrel is set at a slight angle so the water collects on one side for draining. Oil is drained from the high side of the barrel. The first filter case(25 micron) will hang from the spigot and reduce to 2" to help the oil fall into the second filter. The second filter case(5 micron) will also reduce to 2" and be screwed into the top of my storage barrel.

 

Are you planning on using Gravity to move your oil through the filter or are you pumping directly through the filter elements? That could burn up a pump pretty quick... I could easily see making three canisters in series and pumping through them say 50, 25, 5 micron, or throw a 10 in there.

 

Here is a link to my filtering set up the first filter is a polyester-cotten blend that is strechey this and the levis remove all of the non liquid fat my oil looks almost like what you buy new.

filtering set up

 

On my first drum I have a 5 gal. pail with a bunch of holes drilled in it. In the pail, I have a paint screen to catch the big chunks. This pail is mounted in a piece of plywood so that it drains into the drum beneath. In the open top drum, I have one of the 200 micron screens from US Plastics. I heat overnight using a water heater element and water heater thermostat strapped to the side of the metal drum.

I common water heater insulation blanket (about $16 at Home Depot) keeps the heat in the drum very well. You are right... within an hour the 4500 watt heater element running on 115vAC has the veggie to 100 degrees. I could probably turn it off then and it would still be close to that temp in the morning.

The next day, I pump the warm oil through a series of bag filters: 100, 50, 25, 10 and 5 micron. The first two are washable and clog first. I have pumped hundreds and hundreds of gallons through this system and only cleaned the top two bags. The rest flow just fine.

I use the standard 7" x 16" filter bags. You are right... those special housings for these filters are mucho expensive. Out of my range! I glued together some 3/4" CPVC to pump the oil up high and into the first bag. Actually, I use two stacks of bag filters so I could double my flow rate- two identical stacks of filters. After pumping into the top filter, it gravity flows from one bag to the next. The filters are mounted onto a plywood shelf with a 6" hole cut into it for the filter.

I have some 10" plastic funnels to keep the oil flowing from one filter to the next. These drain into a yellow drum funnel which is probably 18" or 20" diameter.

I'm using a 1/4" rotary gear pump (an oil pump will do) connected to a 3-speed drill press. The medium speed is just right. I have a by-pass port on that CPVC fill line where it pumps the oil to the top of the filters. That way I can bleed off any surplus flow as the bags fill up.

The second drum is heated as well and has a standpipe. My oil quality is pretty good as I get very little water on the bottom of this drum. Same for the see-through bowl in the bottom of the Racor filter in the truck.

Todd T

 

ALL HAIL BANSHEE350GOLDENROD!!!! That filtering system of yours will give me performance anxiety for years!!! WELL DONE! I'm a moving soon else I would set my goals to those standards, but very good ideas from that I got. I liked and will use the attachement you had for your 5 micron filter bag, except have five pails in series 100, 50, 25, 10, 5 with a 2 micron final in my ride. Using 5 gallon metal pails w/ lids I should be able to pressure feed the whole system. n Using the pails makes it nvery mobile too.

ToddT, what type of materials are your bags that you are using and able to wash and resuse?

Thanks for your support guys. This forum has really helped. Keep it green. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smokin.gif

 

My system will be all gravity feed except pumping into the truck. I don't have room in the garage to do a permanent setup, so I have to make sure I can break it down and store it without making a mess. When broken down the only thing left on the patio will be the two 55 gal drums. These are painted black to let the sun help with the heating.

I'll try to get some pictures up this weekend when I complete it.

 

ToddT,

Where did you find the 18" funnel? I've looked casually (not very hard), but couldn't find anything that big.

 

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ToddT,

Where did you find the 18" funnel? I've looked casually (not very hard), but couldn't find anything that big.

[/ QUOTE ]

Someone on another forum cut the bottoms off old propane tanks, and replaced the valve with 3/4" pipe to make a funnel. Really cool, and the pipe will also thread into the smaller barrel bunghole

 

[ QUOTE ]
However, if you just keep the heating element on all that time, you create convection currents above the element which stir the water right back up into the oil.


[/ QUOTE ]

Hmmm... I bought the plans from Dana, and when I asked him whether he recommended leaving the unit on all the time or not, he said he definetely recommended leaving it on. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused.gif

 

The big funnel I use to combine the streams from the two stacks of bag filters is a big yellow funnel from Graingers. It has the spout offset on one end, just right for placing the funnel on the top of a regular drum and draining everything into the 2" bung. Check an industrial supply or safety supply catalog for drum accessories.

Todd

 

Does anyone have any suggested links for an "on the go" collection system?

I'm still waiting on the parts to install my FN74 system and wanted to start figuring out collection in the meantime. Basically I have the rest of my F250 short bed to work with (about 5 ft square after the 60 gallon in-bed tank I'm using for the veggie oil system).

I was thinking that I might put another tank of some sort in there, heat it with engine coolant while driving, let it settle in the evenings and extended stops, and drain out any water from a bottom sump before driving again. For filtering, I was hoping to run a 12V pump to circulate it through multiple filter bags.

Any suggestions?

Thanks.

 

Hmmm, I'm surprised he said that. he was using a 240V element on 120 V (so it was pretty low power).

I think I've heard him say online quite a few times (at infopop forum) that convection currents are your enemy in this sort of system. The "heat and let settle" method I"m seeing someone else do right now, involves a LOT of insulation and no extra heating past the high initial heating.

Maybe the unit I saw in Dana's garage was different (he'd just moved last fall and all his equipment was in disarray) than what he sells as plans- the one in his garage was a barrel with a heating element in the bottom, well insulated, with filters above it. Is that similar to the plans? (I can imagine other uses where you heat water in a jacketed heat exchanger thingie for instance in which the transfer of heat is more gentle).

Also, Piedmont biofuels was running some solar hot water panels on their roof and running the hot water through a lot of Pex that was wrapped around a settle tank. They didnt get very good heat transfer that way, but they raised the tank to about 110F (their solar was partially shaded part of the day too so it was not an ideal situation)- this apparently dewatered their nasty disgusting grease quite well over a couple of days (it was a 225 gallon home heating oil or diesel tank, well insulated over the PEX)


Mark

 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
However, if you just keep the heating element on all that time, you create convection currents above the element which stir the water right back up into the oil.


[/ QUOTE ]

Hmmm... I bought the plans from Dana, and when I asked him whether he recommended leaving the unit on all the time or not, he said he definetely recommended leaving it on. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused.gif

[/ QUOTE ]

It is "temperature differential" that creates strong convection currents. Keeping the settling drum at 80-90°F ..and well insulated makes for a very small temperature differential. This creates very small/slow/weak upwhelling currents. Placement of the heating element is also very important.

It is OK to turn off the elelement in my prefilter/dewatering units..but one should wait for 24 hours for the unit to come up to temp and for any suspended water to resettle since very strong currents are et up by the hot element in the cold wvo. This remixes the lower "layer" of very water rich wvo with the dryer wvo higher up in the drum. Since it cost just as much to heat up my prefilter full of wvo as to keep it warm for 4 days I tend to just leave it on unless I simply have no wvo to filter and enough prefiltered to not need to filter more for at least a week. In real life this means I filter for a week and pump into storage...and then turn my unit off for 2-4 weeks.

 

Welcome to the forum, Ford driver!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! as you can see it's a really active one.




mark

 

Interesting, I think I misunderstood the system a bit. So cold oil plus heating element= convection currents, whereas hot oil= water soon settles?

By the way Yokayo Biofuels (biodiesel company) is doing some interesting stuff with 'heat and let settle' in the industrial scale. They stumbled on it by accident (they didn't design for 'heat and let settle' and didn't know about it till I explained that they were doing 'that SVO thing')- they've got a really good filtration rig (sorry, can't talk about what I saw) and their unit dewaters just by virtue of the oil receiving tank for filtered oil being 1000 gallons and holding temperature for a while because of being that big. The oil they're working with is probably some of the nastiest crap I've ever seen- really water-filled at times- so the system's abiltiy to deal with it without massive amounts of heating like conventional plants, is really impressive.

Mark

 

So let me get this strait. The larger the vessel, the more energy efficient the dewatering unit will be by virtue of energy storage. Strait forward.

So which is it? I should leave the heating element on all the time, or bring it the vo up to 300+/- and then let settle within an insulated vessel and for how long?

Probably need not be said but I've seen too many people do this with their houses and not insulate their floors...hot fluids rise, but heat goes whereever it can so insulate the bottom of the barrel. That pink foundation insulation foam ($15 or a 4'x8' piece at the Home Depot Monster) with a piece of plywood on it would work great.