...as a visual type learner, I (as many others) could really benefit from more of your pictures, diagrams, schemas and other visual stuff as a source for inspiration, food for brain or whatever you may call it.

It's been said that it's nearly impossible to have one single definite design but after reading ALL the posts in 2 days (ADHD hyperfocused style), I know there is a lot more to be seen even with all the quality infos.

J-F from Quebec City, Canada

CRMoore, you posed a question on the last page about fines from the catalyst.. In a reactor such as Asads the catalyst never leaves the reactor. In mine the catalyst is in the reflux column and any dust that detaches itself from the blocks should make its way downwards back into the reactor.
I suppose its possible for dust or fines to be carried by the gas flow into the condensers although it has never happened with my outfit.
Any oil produced by this process should be filtered to 5 micron before use anyway which will take care of any fines should they occur.

Asad, inspired by your example I decided to try out an experiment today. I had just loaded my reflux column with my latest catalyst. I filled the reactor with waste plastic, mostly PE and at the last moment I put in 5% bentonite clay on top of the plastic. So this was using both gas phase and liquid phase catalyst.
I immediately noticed a difference. Normally it takes about 4 litres before my catalyst fully activates. The first 4 litres are cloudy and darken overnight and then a stable, lemon coloured fuel flows after that. This time within 1/2 a litre the fuel had cleared and lovely sparkling fuel flowed for the whole batch. I know from experience that in my reactor bentonite alone would not have achieved that rapid result, either in liquid or gas phase but the combination really worked.
I have just invested in a ubblehode viscometer which is a very useful tool if a bit fragile and expensive. My fuel taken from a single condenser has exactly the same viscosity as kerosene which was what I was hoping for. Viscosity is a very important quality in an oil meant for use in a heating burner.
I also found that a blend of 30% my plastic derived fuel and 70% biodiesel produces a mixture with exactly the same viscosity as ordinary diesel. I shall be trying some in my car over the next few days.

Beyond Biodiesel, I dont want to be rude, and I think everyone here on the forum will agree that we have been very patient, but please stop talking rubbish. If you believe that catalysts do not contribute significantly to the cracking of plastics to fuel then do it yourself and show us where we are going wrong, until then just confine your opinions to what you know something about.

Hello IMBD ;
Iam very Glad to know that you & others on this forum will benefit from the clay catalyst topic I started, Infact I have to push the forum community to please open your MIND don't shut them down & keep On the good work of
experimenting .
This is just the tip of the Ice-berg, there are amazing things forum community will discover once they start experimenting .

I would suggest you to try Feuller's earth (FE) you may find a more light colored fuel . In my experience FE is more effective .
Also activate the clay before using it & tel me what happens ???

I Also notice the plastic like smell of the fuel decreased a bit, specially in PE , PP after few days darkens a lot & smell gets stronger day by day .

Also Try 10% of clay mixed thoroughly with PE, NOT put it on top of the waste plastic.

Lastly I would like to know how your car performed on this clay based PE-Diesel ?

Thanks Asad Farooqui! Nice of you!

One more question, please!!


How to activate clay?

Hello ;
Read again my last weeks articles carefully , the details are already there .

Sorry, Asad!
I went through this whole year. I have not found anything

Otpadnoulje, Asad mentioned heating the clay up to 400C before use in order to activate it. Clay has a unique ability to trap water between its plate shaped particles. Its this quality that makes clay hold its shape when air dried. However no amount of air drying will remove that trapped water. Heating to 400C not only removes the water but the escaping steam rips apart the structure of the clay exposing more surface to act as catalyst sites. This can also be done by using a strong acid such as Sulphuric but heating is easier safer and faster.
Asad do you still uses a reflux column or do you direct the vapours straight to the condensers?

IMBD ;
Thanks for explaining the activation of clays.
It looks you are doing your homework well . Keep up the good work .

Reflux cloumn I use just to make sure that the heacy oil fraction around 400-350 celcius are fed-baxk in the reactor .

While working at Chevron Research in their cat cracking lab we always kept our zeolite catalysts on a steam table to keep it free of water. Most catalysts are hydroscopic, meaning they grab water out of the atmosphere. However, there was no effort to "activate" them by taking them to 400c prior to use. We just loaded them into the reactor and away we went.

Sorry that some people do not appreciate my ability to read research reports, nor my experience of using catalysts in the lab for cracking petroleum.

I did another batch today to confirm my findings and this one went just as well. I noticed that the first half litre was a bit cloudy and after an hour a thin layer of a dark liquid had settled to the bottom. By the way it moved it looked like water so I sprinkled in a small amount of super absorbent polymer into it and sure enough the polymer granules swelled up immediately, confirming that it was water. The waste plastic I used was very dry so I believe that this water came from the bentonite. Activation by heat would avoid this.
The naming of clays can be very confusing. Bentonite can be classified into Sodium bentonite, used in the oil industry and as cat litter for its water absorption qualities. Its cheap and plentiful and has weak ion exchange/catalytic properties.
Calcium bentonite also known as fullers earth and sometimes montmorillonite because it contains a lot of this. It is less absorbent of water but more absorbent of oil, has higher ion exchange/catalyst properties, is more expensive but is probably more what we are looking for.
Potassium bentonite is rare and Ive no experience with it.
Sometimes suppliers will call sodium bentonite fullers earth so that they can ask a higher price.

So, how large is your pyrolysis unit? How many litters of fuel do you get out of a batch? Knowing how much you get will tell us how effective your various catalyst experiments are.
As a blender of waste oils with solvents, such as gasoline (petrol), to make diesel fuel I found measuring the viscosity of my resulting blends has been very useful. So I ended up purchasing two different viscometers. First I purchased a visgage, which I found to be too complicated to use in the field. And, it does not cover the range of diesel fuel.

I then purchased a set of viscups and I am very happy with them.

I also purchased a set of hydrometers to help in characterizing my fuel blends. I find them very useful and easiest to use in the field.

This is very useful information. Have you tried just blending your light fractions directly with waste oils instead of using the intermediate step of making biodiesel out of your WVO?
Except you can drive off the water at only 100c, you do not have to take any catalyst up to 400c just to get rid of the water in the catalyst matrix.

[quote=imakebiodiesel;205657]Otpadnoulje, Asad mentioned heating the clay up to 400C before use QUOTE]

Thanks, Asad and IMB!

How long time should i heat clay at 400C.

Thanks!

Hello ;
YES, The above mentioned instruments are very useful .

I would like to ADD an instrument which can indicate the moisture/water content of the liquid fuel ???
Even small traces of water content in the fuel will be destructive for the Injectors of the vehicle .

Taking any catalyst to high temperature has a full scientific reason .
Even all the Synthetic-Zeolite made are calcinated around 500-700 celcius .
Iam quite sure that even the Zeolite you used at CISCO would be from a big-supplier , definitely calcinated , as it is a standard procedure .
I have seen a very nice video on youtube, of a zeolite catalyst manufacturer having TWO multi-million dollar plants. They also follow this rule .

You are right, water is one of the most destructive contaminants in diesel type fuel. A couple of years ago I invented the carbide manometer, a simple cheap device that measures the water content in fuel. It is accurate to about 10 parts per million (ppm). I made the design open source and its now used world wide by biodiesel producers, large and small. It costs about 25 euro to assemble. If you follow the link below you will see how it works. The design in the article uses a plastic cup because I was initially worried about the pressure but in fact a glass screw top jar as used for honey or jam works better and is perfectly safe.

My test reactor processes 1 kg of waste plastic at a time. I am in the middle of constructing a larger 80kg unit at the moment.
In my last full test of a catalyst. I processed 11 kg of plastic in 11 batches before the 200gms of catalyst stopped working, ie the fuel darkened and waxed slightly. Im confident that the larger processor will work much better as each time I refill the small unit fresh oxygen gets into the retort.
My yield per batch was an average of 1120ml of liquid fuel and 46 gms of residual char. The weight of the liquid fuel is 873 grams so that leaves 80 grams of gas.
The liquid fuel contains 60% diesel, 40% kerosene and 10% petrol. Without any separation it works perfectly, and burns cleanly in a kerosene home heating burner. I have separated the heavy fraction and run my Skoda 1.9 litre diesel car on it. On the smoke particle test it performs better than normal diesel.

In Europe many recent model diesel cars use optical sensors so black diesel will not work. In addition using waste motor oil as a fuel in any appliance that does not have type approval carries a fine of 5000euro. The regulations controlling emissions of dioxin and toxic metals are very strict here and I believe rightly so.

In my last post the percentage of kerosene should have read 30%.

I forgot to include the link to the carbide manometer. Here it is
Carbide Manometer | Quality Testing

Hey I still read throught the forum but don't have much time I'm still on page 16 so I apologize if I ask something that has been answered further ahead.

Does anyone knows or have or knows where could be downloaded some scematic of this japanise blest copmany device
Blest.co.Ltd., "english catalogue"

I think it will be usefull to have it in hand. And will be way cheaper to DYI the device rather paying for it.

thanks

Great results. Excellent yield!
How do you plan to heat your new 80kg reactor?
Thanks

The larger unit will be powered by a kerosene burner like the one in the link below. Most households who dont have natural gas connection in Ireland use these burners. I have been testing one and it burns very cleanly on my crude fuel.
Riello | Products | Oil Burners | 40 Series - Overview

Be careful, I'm afraid that the working temperature of Reactor spoils burner. When the burner reaches operating temperature and turns off. Hot gases will then head back to the burner and destroy . Distorting the spindle motor. Plastic parts will be melted. If burner works without stop, nothing will happen.

Ask me, how do I know that?

I suspect you have learned this through bitter experience. Please tell me more, I am just abouit to start building my fire box.

Hello ;
The kerosene/gas burner IMBD planning to use is a perfect choice .
I guess your experience with it was not so good .
The reason could be you just directly placed the whole burner directly under the reactor.
Without making a firefox in which only the burner's flaming mouth is Inserted inside & the rest of the burner body is placed Outside so no heat of any sort can effect its plastic parts .

IMBD I hope you get the idea .

I think that is impossible with conventional burner to do this job. 400 c is coming too. It is not easy to solve this problem.
My advice is:

use, ozzert burner!

Ozzert/spike drip feed burner - Topic



With slight modifications can ozzert burner feed plastics, tires, wmo, or perpex, as I do.
Yes, I am burning plexiglass.

I know the Ozzert burner and it is a very powerful unit but the regulations about burning waste motor oil are very strict here. The design of furnace I am using is adapted from a type of pottery kiln used a lot in the past. This kiln can easily go up to 1200C so I thought my requirement of 4-500C would be no problem.
The burner is mounted outside a brick firebox. The retort, where the plastic is heated, is mounted above the fire box, enclosed in an insulated mild steel casing. The flue is at the top of the casing so the heat is constantly moving upwards.
I can see how the blast tube of the burner may suffer from the extreme heat because it is the only part of the burner that is actually inside the fire box. These blast tubes are cheap and could be replaced every year or so.
The Riello burner in the link has a small shutter which closes the air intake when the burner turns off. So hot gases cannot move back through the burner.
You have got me worried now.

My burner has mounted outside a brick firebox too. The flue is at the top of the casing so the heat is constantly moving upwards, too. 3m high. I had had Riello burners,too, 3pcs. Now I no longer have any Riello. Only have a bunch of "spare parts".
I don't know anything about small shutter.

IMB, you're a very nice person. I learned a lot from you. I'm sorry. I did not want to scare You. I just wanted to save your riellos (yes, plural). This is supposed to be a small token of appreciation.

IMHO
In the fire zone, (fire box, flue) is some pressure. Like jet machine.
Draft and fan from Riello manage to overcome this pressure. When burner turn off, only draft is not enough, and i had the heat back to burner. Don't forget, the temperature in fire box is more then 400c. maybe over 1000c. These thousanders are very first guests in the living room of our fragile Riello.

I burned 5 burners, 3 Riellos and 2 Weisshaupts. Yes , I am stupid.

Hello sir,
Great innovation. CAN YOU PLEASE list out all the things required to make this apparatus as I choose it to be my mechanical engineering project and I have to submit a list of requirements in college. I need to submit it by tomorrow. Also it will be a great help if you provide the estimated cost of everything separately.
Reply as fast as possible.
Thanx

I've read this thread from the beginning, great stuff!

I will be building my own apparatus soon, It will make use of a 100lb propane tank for a reactor vessel and be heated by a electric pottery kiln.

If any of you experimenting with catalysts want an easy way to form the material into small balls you should consider an extruder. I've attached a pic of my shop unit, ( it's ugly but it works ). The die is just an example, it makes clay ropes for hand building vases and such.

Tyski

Attached Images

Clay Extrusion.jpg (262.4 KB, 95 views)

l try today a coffee can with plastic on a 700 watt hotplate l leave it about 15 minutes l try the gas output in a bubler and it burns l wish to know what type of plastic l need that make more petrol like pp ps whice is better one?

Otpatnoulje, I appreciate your advice. I have already built my brick fire box and have a spare Riello burner so I am going to go ahead. After hearing your experiences I have made a couple of modifications which may avoid the problems you had. I will use 8 metres of insulated flue to provide a stronger draught. My riello has an automatic shutter which closes as soon as the burner switches off. Lastly I am adding a mechanism which will allow me to slide the burner back out of the fire box once it starts to cycle. I hope this will work but if it does not you will be entitled to say, "I told you so".
Tyski your extruder would be very useful for making pellets of clay catalysts, can you explain how it works.
I am doing a batch today using Fullers Earth in the reactor with the plastic instead of the bentonite. It will be interesting to see if it works better.

imakebiodiesel,
The extruder is uses a piece of 4" square tubing for a barrel with a plunger at one end and a die opening at the other, dies are interchangeable and clamped in place. If you a re interested in building one Google " Clay Extruder ", you'll get lots of ideas.

Small tubes of clay catalyst cut to a short length may prove to be good for max surface area.