Waste Vegetable Oil Fuels

My 300TD is licenced & registered and made the trek from Salt Lake to Hebgen Lake, MT. The whole way there was some form of biodiesel in the tank. The first 200 miles was on my own brew. Then I diluted with some petrol diesel and also brought along some stock from Dal Soglios.

I’m in the middle of my 4th batch that looks good and is being washed.

Batch 3 is finally coming to a close. I’m giving it one last bubble wash as I type. Tomorrow I transfer it to the holding/drying barrel and then it’s to the gas biodiesel tank!

Last batch was a bit suspect. After testing it for unreacted mono and bi-glycerides, the result was no good. A layer of red brown glycerin dropped out. Bummer! That meant we did something wrong. Not enough methanol, too much water in the oil, not enough catalyst due to a bad titration… who knows. This time, however, with the help of master chemist Kevin. We were spot on. No glycerin out of this quality test. Continue reading ‘Batch 3: Mayo No More’

So I was still a bit nervous about the latest batch. It looked like the emulsion had broken but I was still left with some seriously cloudy biodiesel. I took a sample and decided to heat it up to see if I could get it to clear up. I put the jar in a pot of water and turned it on very low heat. Just to be sure I used a candy thermometer to monitior the temperature of the water, and via heat transfer, the biodiesel. My stove on 3 (mine goes to 11) kept the temps at about 150 F. Eventually the sample cleared up and is crystal clear in comparison with another sample taken.

I guess that means that I’ll just keep washing it. I’ve misted and heated twice now, and am currently watching a bubble wash. Hopefully this will clear it up and we’ll have 35 gallons of honey nectar!

This must not have been a very tenacious emulsion. I’ve had worse. After about an hour of heating (we have a heating element installed in our wash tank) and misting with heated water there has been some serious progress. It looks to me that I’m about half way done. Maybe by tonight I’ll be back in business.

You can see from the top picture that the upper section is still quite milky. I don’t quite have an explanation for that, but I can definately see 3 layers.

How many times have I been warned and have I gone against these warnings? Add one more! The third batch is in the wash tank. It looked very nice coming out of the processor. There was no obvious separation between the glycerin and the biodiesel so I erred on getting more biodiesel and included some “darker” golden honey in the wash tank. I mist washed and took off about 5 gallons of milky water. I misted again until there was enough water to start bubbling. I left the misters on and planned to come out and check on it in a minute. A minute was about an hour, and this is the result. Mayo! Continue reading ‘Don’t Make Emulsions!’