Waste Vegetable Oil Fuels

One of the best ideas that got put in to practice today was that of the “more stable stand pipe”. Basically I’ve been pondering how to make the black pipe connections to my barrels more stable. The ones I have that are threaded into the 3/4″ bung ports are so soft and have so few threads that by the time you tighten everything that needs attaching, it feels like you could just rip out the pipe by hand. The move of our feed tanks out back behind the garage (#1 idea of the day), and the decision to not cut open two of these barrels, exacerbated the need for an elegant solution, and it happened. I thought that it worked out so well the I took a set of pictures as I fabbed the second set. I’ll show them here along with step by step instructions.

Necessity: Who’s your Mother?
From what I’ve seen and read many biodiesel home brewers use upside down barrels as storage and wash tanks. The bungs of most barrels have at least one punch out port for 3/4″ pipe. By turning a barrel upside down you are able to use the two holes that are already available. Hard piping to these bungs allows for access to the liquid in these barrels. No leaks and some strength are necessary at the bung to black pipe connection in order to use a barrel this way. Until I upgraded to this more stable way, it was be gentle, and use lots of caulk, and hope it didn’t start to leak mid wash.

What you’ll need as the base for your stand pipe. You are going to have to get creative as to it’s use in your specific application and the additional parts that you will need.

• 1 - 3/4″ Black Pipe Nipple - 8″ with 2 1/2″ of thread cut on one end. I found mine at Home Depot and had the guy cut the threads. He had to override the auto shutoff mechanism so it would cut 2 1/2″ deep in to the nipple. I used an 8″ nipple so that I could clear the 2×4 cross supports of my drum mount. You might get away with shorter.
• 1 - 3/4″ Black Pipe Coupling
• 1- Bung - Preferably out of your barrel. I’ve found that most poly drums have one fine (standard pipe thread) and one course threaded bung. The threaded punch out side has mostly been the course thread. I have found bungs at the local barrel joint that are pipe thread and that have a 3/4″ punch out port.
• 1 - 3/4″ Flange - Home Depot only had galvanized so we went to the local do-it-yourself plumbers supply for a cheaper black pipe version.
• 1 - 3/4″ Long Nipple - This is your stand pipe. Get it as long as you want. I used a 12″.
• Silicone Caulk - I could use some suggestions on the kind to buy form anyone who has done some research. I had a tube that I found in the garage.
• Plumbers Tape - I’ve been through a lot of this stuff. The little blue rolls just don’t cut it any more.

Instructions

1. Punch out the 3/4″ port out of your bung. Jim hung it between two boards and used a regular flat head screwdriver to chisel around the edge. I used a non-ported bung in the first set of these that I fabbed. I took a 1″ hole saw to the non-port side. It seemed to work just fine. You may want to add some extra caulk at the coupling bung seam.
2. Thread the flange onto the 8″ nipple. On the 2 1/2″ threaded side spin on the flange so that the flat side has the majority of the 2 1/2″ of thread protruding through it.







3. Caulk the spaces in the cross pattern of the bung. This will make sure the the entire space between the bung and the flange gets full and sealed with silicone.
4. Thread on the bung (slide if you used the hole saw) so that the flat of the flange is on the outside of the bung. Thread it flush down to the flange.
5. Tape the rest of the end of the nipple that sticks through the bung.







6. Thread on the coupling. Tighten it on.
7. Back off the bung so that there is a space between the flange and the bung and the bung is flush with the coupling.
8. Add some more caulk in between the flange and the bung so that there is a seal and the gap will be filled.







9. Back off the flange until it is flush with the bung.
10. Tape the stand pipe and thread it into the coupling.
11. Caulk the threads and spin in the bung. I found that after I got the bung tight, if I twisted the 8″ nipple, the assembly would start to “unthread”. I finished tightening the bung by using a pipe wrench on the throat of the flange.

Notes and applications:
If you have your drum open (bottom cut off) and clean (no fun to climb into a nasty barrel) in your application of this stronger stand pipe, you could use a flange on the inside of the barrel too. We found that the fine threads of the bung were now the weak point of the installation. A flange on the inside would remedy weakness even further, though might necessitate longer threads on the 8″ nipple.

You could also use this idea of two opposing flanges at any point on the barrel. The sides would need a lot of extra caulk, but after a bit of blow torch heating you might be able to use the flanges to stretch and flatten out the side of the barrel to make a flush fit. Any flat area top or bottom would be a breeze.

Our application is for a set of oil storage tanks that we set up on the back of my garage. We have them in series with gradually decreasing length of stand pipes. As the chunks and water of the oil settle out they don’t make the transfer to the next tank and stand pipe separation, and so forth.