Waste Vegetable Oil Fuels

Well, Jim and I did some oil collection on Monday. We collected about 30 gallons from our local Chinese restaurants. I had about 12 from my local mall Japanese lunch spot. We combined all that in the “feed” tank and hooked up the hose. We pumped in 35 gallons. Well… at least 10 gallons more than my 25 gallon mark and called it good.

My plans for tonight fell through, and Jim was calling asking when we could fire up batch #2, so we got after it tonight. We were short a few gallons of Methanol, so I started calling around trying to find some. Hi-Valley Chemical wanted $272 for 55 gallons. Hello! I had to call back and make sure I wrote it down right or didn’t get quoted the wrong figure. $5 a gallon? I rapidly dismissed the idea of buying from them, and started thinking serious about pushing up the SVO plans. Anyway we still needed a couple extra gallons of methanol and I figured we could get the 3 gallons we needed from some of the local biodieselers. I called around and found a group that was gracious enought to not only give me some methanol, but also gave a tour of their great processor. More on that later. I also talked with the local guru, Jack Jones of Riverstones Biodiesel. He was out of methanol but told me that he gets his methanol at Kemco in Lehi for $90 for 55 gallons. Oh yeah and UBC members get 10% off. Need we state that I’ll never go to Hi-Valley Chemical again?

After work I started up the the heaters in the processor. That was at 7 ish. I went to pick up the methanol at 7:30. I told Jim to meet me so we could get a tour. It was 8:15 before we got out of there. When I got home we were onl at 80 deg F. We did some titration, and prepped the Methoxide. Finnaly at 11 PM we had critical temps. $ hours is way too long to wait for the oil to heat up. I’m going to look into some pipe insulation, additional water heater insulation, and another heating element.

Finally we added the methoxide which was no small feat. The lid was not sealing so we had methoxide dripping everywhere. That mad me a bit grumpy. I’m thinking that the gasket may be shot from methoxide exposure. I saw a better way tonight at Charlies, so we’ll be switching soon. At midnight I shut her down to settle. It was sweet to see the separation happening as the biodiesel and glycerine equalized to the liquid level in the sight tube. I could see glycerine droping out in micro droplets. I got pretty psyced to see another sucessfull batch coming together. This is way too easy.