ALCOHOL can be a GAS and Biofuels

[1NRG24Seven]

Here is a link for the replacement motor for my mixers new from Grainger Supply Company.

Notice these motors have a place to attach a steel handle for your mixer making for easy handling. Also see my mixer pics above to see the handles on them.

The first motor listed and shown at top of this link is the one. Item #4ETE5

Motors - pg4 - Grainger Industrial Supply

[1NRG24Seven]

Hi again 24,

Are you using sodium hydroxide or potassium hydroxide for your process? Or maybe something else? Thanks,

Carroll

Potassium Hydroxide. I started out using the Sodium Hydroxide but was too much work as the glycerin would solidify and could not be pumped until heated again. The Potassium is more expensive but well worth the glycerin staying liquid. Also with Potassium your glycerin can be used on fields for fertilizer unlike Sodium which will kill everything.

I also built a dust abatement system for my truck to spray gravel roads down with it at a solution ratio of 50 gallons glycerin mixed with 650 additional gallons of water for a total of 700 gallons of water. Flood the driveway or road with all the water you want to saturate the substrate, once the water evaporates it leaves the bio degradable glycerin in the dust making it heavier and it will not kick up. The stuff works usually one season before reapplication is required again. Repeated applications will cause further compacting of the gravel and dust as its driven on making it almost as good as pavement.

Make sure to distill all Methyl alcohol out of the glycerin before doing this as the Methanol is considered to be toxic, even tho it would evaporate in hot sun, just may take some time before its not detected. Its too valuable to leave in the glycerin anyway, may as well recover it over and over to save on expenses and trips to buy more.

[1NRG24Seven]

Just wanted to say here that so far we are looking at equipment used to make the bio-diesel, then I will get into the process I use using these simple to make units, then you will understand why its so much faster the way I am doing it and why I can make by myself (and have done so) about 700 gallons in one 10 hr day.

Also will cover what I do with the oil after I pick it up and pump it off the truck through a filter process to remove the bigger particles of food. The el cheapo way. So bear with me as we get deeper into the process so you can get the full picture.

The main components are as follows:

!- Oil Heating Tank
2- Mixers for 30 gallon plastic drums
3- Mixer for 5 gallon bucket for the mixing of potassium hydroxide into the Methanol or also called Methyl alcohol.
4- pumps to move liquids to different containers
5- optional neon transformer to speed up glycerin preliminary settling process.
6- Tanks of drums or other containers you might need for storage of raw waste veggie oil stock and bio-diesel finished product and glycerin, waste gunk for sledge and food crumbs.
7- Alcohol Recovery stills, which can be used also for ethanol production to run gas motors too or to cook or heat with.

think that is it, but may think of something else later and will add it.
Thanx for your patients....24Seven

[1NRG24Seven]

Hi

My son and myself have also been producing our own biodiesel for six years. I am very interested in how you separate the glycerin so quickly. My son has developed a very simple wash system for cleaning the fuel that works very well. Maybe you would be interested in that. You said you have not bought any fuel for six years so does that mean you live in the south or have you found a way to use biodiesel in cold weather? I read about a process some time ago where a university was doing something to the biodiesel so that it didn't gel in cold weather any worse than regular diesel. Maybe you know something about that. Well enough of my rambling. Just to let you know we definitely are interested in what ever you can share.

Looking forward to your thread, Carroll

Sure go ahead and post the wash process here your son came up with for others who may wish to do that citfta. That is what this thread is for.
.
Now for a cold weather formula that will help to keep you from gelling up, I have been told this is good down to minus twenty but as of yet have not tried it.

Add to 275-300 gallons of bio-diesel. Break it down for smaller quantities as needed using your math skills.

1/2 gallon leaded gasoline
4 gallons pearl white kerosene
mix as needed.

I have recovered alcohol from my glycerin as 30% of the alcohol is in your glycerin you original used. Once I start recovering it from the bio-diesel also, will be adding this formula for cold weather.

Good Luck....24Seven

[Aaron]

instant separation

You want to find an old neon transformer that is rated at no more then 8000 volts, mine is 7000 volts and works fine, I tried a 9,000 volt unit and did not work.

I don't have the biodiesel experience you guys have but I have done a
few experiments. An ignition coil pulsed to a pos and negative plate,
one at the bottom of the container and one towards the top will cause
almost instantaneous separation as described.

I was using small salsa sized jars batches.

There are some youtube vids on this and my ag expert did this too. It works.

[1NRG24Seven]

Cool Aaron thank you for the post. Just goes to show there is more than one way to skin a cat.

This seperating of the glycerin will become apparent as to why its a valuable option to use. I mentioned before I cut the tops out of 10 or 11- 30 gallon plastic barrels. I did this as I left the biodiesel in these barrels for 8 hours before sucking the biodiesel off the top of the glycerin at the bottom...usually the next day. 11 x 25 gallons = 275 gallons and 1- 55 gallon barrell of Methanol will make 11- 5 gallon batches of methyl hydroxide once the potassium hydroxide is added to the five gallons of methonal. Each 5 gallon batch of Methyl hydroxide will be mixed into 25 gallons of hot oil at no hotter than 150 deg. F.. Therefor we will now have 11 - 30 gallon drums of biodiesel settling. The faster I can get it to settle on the preliminary settling stage the faster I can free up 11 drums of liquid gold and reuse em for more production and remove the full drums of oil stacking up and clogging up my process.. once settled you will have 25 gallons of biodiesel and aprox. 5 gallons of glycerin which is now at the bottom as its much heavier than the oil. Glycerin when the alcohol is recovered out of it weighs about 10 USA pounds per gallon, while the biodiesel is about 7.5 pounds per gallon.

So now you have part of the formula of making biodiesel....more on this later.......24Seven

[Aaron]

high voltage separation

This Graham video, this is what my ag guy showed me:
YouTube - GrahamLaming's Channel

That is almost identical to what I came up with.

This is my friend's acct:
YouTube - High Speed, Glycerol Separation using High Voltage

[1NRG24Seven]

I use about 5 - 10 gallon a weak (In the summer). For the most part its just a big lawnmower. I do have bucket and rake and backhoe attachment but they are only used for general maintenance.

I can get cooking oil. Its a problem here, everybody deep fries but there is no place to dump it except in the trash. The land fill and trash processing plant are looking for solution.

I could also grow whatever I needed.

Matt

Matt, your average restaurant will produce between 50 gallons at the lower end to about 100 gallons at the upper end, some even more. So given this to account and if your getting fairly clean oil you can expect between a 20-25% waste factor right off the bottom line. Therefor a restaurant producing 100 gallons a month will net you about 75 gallons at 25% waste.

Some guys just do a basic filter and run the whole 100 gallons through their processors, I do not like to do this even tho a percentage of the fats will convert to bio-diesel. The reason why is it comes back to bite ya in the cold season by causing it to gel up at higher temps. Besides, the bio-diesel process is to remove the trans-fatty acids from the oil to make bio-diesel. If some of the fats convert to fuel I still do not care to burn that part as it leaves gum and varnishes and soaps in my engine that may cause problems down the road. Another thing is I have found that in the fatty creamy layer at the bottom of the oil as it sits and separates from the creamy layer you will have most of your potato starch and silt and other fine food particles suspended in it which takes longer to settle out once made into bio-diesel. Therefor I opted to just make bio-diesel out of the clear oil floating above this layer. I pick up oil all year round and usually only make my bio-diesel a few months out of the year in summer, when its good and hot outside. The heat from the sun hitting my tanks helps to lessen the creamy line in my tanks as it settles out. I am in no big rush and usually always have an extra 1000 gallons ready to brew anyhow any time of the year if needed. Solar heat can work for those who are patient. Then once I pump off the nice clean clear oil off the top I have far less problems with my fast processing, which enables me to have a consistent window of trans-fatty acids left in the mix without doing any pre-processing tests at all. I have used this method for about 5 of the 6 years and had one bad 30 gallon batch because the clear oil was not mixed in the big tank before it was gravity feed into my heating tank. So it must of had most the heavier fats in that batch concentrated as it was off the bottom of the tank. Therefore mix large tanks using a pump near the bottom to mix it up a while even if the oil is all clear. ...24

[citfta]

Fuel wash tank

Hi all,

For those interested in washing their fuel after the glycerin is removed my son has come up with a simple way to do that. We like to wash the fuel to restore the PH to as near neutral as possible. The first thing you need is a suitable container. A 55 gallon plastic drum is perfect. If you can only get a steel drum that will also work except you may have some rusting in the bottom of the tank after a while. On the side as close to the bottom as you can you need to make a hole to mount a bulkhead type hose or pipe connection. Next connect your hose or pipe and route it to the top stopping 8 inches or so below the top. You can put a tee there if you want with the long part of the tee straight up and down. This will allow you to connect a hose or what ever to the wash tank to carry the waste water away from your wash area. Do not use an elbow at the top as once you get the wash water flowing out of the tank you will start a siphoning action that will suck all your fuel out of the tank. Next you need to get the smallest sprayer nozzles you can find in the gardening section at Lowes or Home Depot. These are called misting nozzles. You mount 2 of them above the wash tank about even with the top of the tank. This is not real critical. You are just wanting fine droplets of water to fall into the tank. You will want to put a valve in the line to control the flow of water as you only want a small amount of water going into the tank. Somewhere on the order of 1 to 2 gallons per hour total for both nozzles combined. To use the tank you first put about 10 gallons of water in the tank. Then slowly fill the tank with biodiesel until the water in the bottom of the tank is pushed up the outside line and starts to run out of that line. You need to go slow the first time until you get an idea of how full the tank will be when you are at the right level. This will usually be about 40 gallons of biodiesel fuel if you are using a 55 gallon drum. If you overfill the tank you will force all the water out of the bottom of the tank. After the tank is filled with the biodiesel you then turn on the water and adjust the flow as I said before, about 1 to 2 gallons per hour. Again this is not critical. You just want the water to fall through the biodiesel and wash out the soap etc. left over from the processing. As the water accumulates in the bottom it will flow out the overflow pipe and give you a continuous wash process. We watch for the water to start running clear out of the overflow pipe and then we are sure the fuel is now clean. In cool weather the process is improved by using a 220 water heater element running on 110 volts. We have the electrical connections sealed up and just hang the element from a rod over the top of the tank. We hang it from a couple of wires off the rod so it is horizontal. Just make sure the element stays in the fuel and not in the water. Good fuel that did not need a lot of hydroxyl can be washed in 12 hours or so. Really bad oil that required a lot of hydroxyl may need 24 to 36 hours to wash clean. After the fuel is clean you can wait a day or so for the water to settle out or use the same heat element to heat the fuel and this will speed up the water settling process. We use the fuel when it looks pretty clear and not cloudy. Some oils will not get real clear. They are more like dark tea, but they will still lose the cloudy look when dry.

Carroll

[wantfreeenergy]

Thank You for this information.

I don't have a diesel vehicle, but since I now am living back on da farm there's machinery that does use diesel. And I actually may be trading my truck for a diesel truck. So for me this is perfect timing, it's a perfect shake for waking me up again to being proactive.

Actually I didn't know that it was so cheap to make bio-diesel. I thought it cost the same as purchasing it at the pump. Maybe it was ethanol I was thinking about. I dunno. But I didn't spend much time learning about it in the past because I didn't have the opportunity to use it. "poor excuse, I know, LOL".

It seems that after the initial setup cost it cost's around 70 cents per gallon?

And if I understand the process correctly. First, filter the oil to get the food particles out. Next, heat the oil. Then, mix it with the methyl alcohol, agitate it. After it's mixed with the methyl alcohol you run current through the oil to get the glycerin to settle. Now here's where I am curious about the next procedure. Is there still methyl alcohol in the bio-diesel? It seems that most settles with the glycerin, but a little stays with the bio-diesel? So you can either heat up the bio-diesel a second time and run the fumes through a condenser and collect some of the methyl alcohol. Or just wash it. But either way if you collect the bit of methyl alcohol or not from the bio-diesel it still needs washed. Lastly, heat up the glycerin and collect the methyl alcohol through a condenser to reuse on the next batch.

We have two 500 gallon drums which are typically full of diesel. I don't know how often they are filled, but I know there's a discount for em. Yet it's probably no where near under a buck a gallon.

I really don't have any information to add to this thread. I just wanted to say thank you.

[1NRG24Seven]

Hello wantesfreenergy welcome to the thread.

If you made biodiesel and recovered zero of the methanol you will be at around $1.50 a gallon. Last I checked Methanol was $250-275.00 per 55 gallon drum and that was at one of my best price sellers. 55 gallons makes 275 gallons roughly if you have good clear oil, a lil less if cloudy. The potassium prices I don't know what is current prices because the farm I buy it from had a pallet they bought when they were making biodiesel...so I get it for the price they paid which is $50.00 per 50# bag or 1 dollar a pound.

If your not allowing the oil to settle your gonna use 33 lbs of the bag for 55 gallons of methanol

if ya are going to let the oil settle and only use what is clear you can treat 2-55 gallon barrels of methanol

so from this you should be able to do the math. You might want to check prices on chemicals locally.

Hope this helps...24

[1NRG24Seven]

Hello everyone....

I thought i would take some more pics and talk here about picking up the oil and showing what I do with it once back here. I pump the oil off a 330 gallon tote I carry on the back of my truck through a filtration system I will show in the following pics. The filter system will also work with a drum instead of a tote as a drum also has 2" pipe thread in the bung. The filter is system is made up of a cattle feed bin which is nothing more then a 55 gallon barrel cut off about 16" below the top of the barrel and turned upside down bung facing down. A 2" pipe nipple is then screwed into the 2" bung at the bottom of the vessel and that is then screwed into any 2" bung in barrels or totes or any other holding tank. A wire mesh trash basket (Walmart $8.00) is then fitted with a 1/2" bolt in its base. A hole is drilled in the center of a steel cut off barrel and a 1/2" nut welded to its bottom to receive the bolt in the center of the trash bin so it can be secured down, this way it can not fall over if a pump handle and hose is attached. The oil is then pumped through this mesh and is caught in the giant funnel and directed down the hole into your holding tank.

This is the 1st stage of filtration to get all larger chunks and crumbs out of oil. This also makes good chicken feed as they love it.

The second stage is to then run the oil through it again but this time with a sack made of bridal veil material, or you can purchase paint filter sacks from most hardware paint stores...make sure the sack fits the inside of the basket...the basket is now going to serve as a rigid frame to support the sack so the sack can filter out smaller particles.

I filter out 330 gallons at a time so i do it in two stages as then I can usually do 330 gallons before i dump the contents of the trash mesh can. the finer mesh may have to be cleaned a few more times in this amount of oil as it will clog up faster. For less amounts of oil I would just start with stage 2 filtration and then be done with it. Like say a 50 gallon load.

[1NRG24Seven]

The pics from my previous post do not show the whole 330 gallon tote the filter setup was sitting on, just the very top.

What I then do is pump the contents of this tote into yet another tote so it may sit for a time and allow all the silt, heavier fats, potatoe starch and other extra fine food particles to settle out. I could have just as easily moved my filtration system to another tote, but because of the way the totes are built with a recessed 2 inch bung this is more of a hassel then it appears. If for instance it was a 55 gallon drum instead of the tote I would just move it to another drum and save the time to pump it.

The attached pic shows some oil I filtered late last year around the end of October first of November or there about when the temperatures were dropping as winter was approaching. The oil seemed to be very creamy and this meant that it would not be until the temperatures would again be warmer for the separation to be more complete. This tote will no doubt have to see a week or so of 80 plus deg. F before most of the clear oil floats to the top and most of the silt can then settle out. Cold weather means the oil gets very thick. If its real thick then nothing settles but is suspended in the buttery mix. In the pic you can see the creamy oil line below the darker clear oil. This darker section will increase as the temperature rise and nights not get so cold. This pic was taken yesterday and temps still drop to the low 30's at night. Last night is was 30 deg. F, 2 deg below freezing. Day temps hit between high 50's and mid 60's. As the days get warmer the sun will shine on and through the simi-transparent totes and give me a solar heating effect in the oil, thus allowing it to further separate. Since I have plenty of time and patients and plenty of oil I am in no rush to let nature take its coarse and do the work for me. I could chose to heat it up myself and then run it through an expensive centrifuge but this is more work and more energy expended doing so, I have tried that route, Its simply easier for me to just filter it and let it set in the sun.

Here is the pic of the cream line and darker part of clear oil floating above it in a 330 gallon plastic tote.

[theremart]

Thinking ahead.

I have the book "Alcohol can be a gas" and I have applied for a permit where I was before, and did not get it, I believe this time when I apply I should because of where I am.

I have asked 15 restaurants for their oil, and I have been turned down at all of them. It seems others have had the same idea as I have :-)

This being the case, I am looking to attempt to grow my own crop for making alcohol. I am thinking of using a large dish with a sun tracker to distill the alcohol. I have seen others who have done this, and it looks to me to be a reasonable use of resources.

Seeing that the compost heap that I have been working with has keep the temperature up over 80 degrees for well over 3 weeks during the winter months, I believe this would be an excellent place to make the mash.

First thing is first, I will get my federal permit, and then will setup shop, but I will knock on the door of a few more restaurants first.

Since after my research on my compost heap, I believe the thing I am missing most is greens, I believe if I was to get some algae growing and add it to the compost heap I would get the right balance of nutrients for the heap, and I would again get the system heating up again.


I found out at my church last week two of the guys there have been doing this for years, using toilet paper for filters for the oil. They claimed they got better performance than other standard fuel with this method.

Thanks for starting this topic, I am encouraged by it. !

[1NRG24Seven]

Continuing on...

Once the oil has set in the hot sun for a few weeks and I will see that the cream line will be about 25% of the oil above it. I will then pump it off the top making sure to not pump the silt or creamy layer with it. This is easier said then done as any suction from the pump wand will sometimes pick up some of this cream. Therefor its pumped in yet another tote or tank to let it settle some more. Attached are a few pics one showing the black steel 600 gallon tank with 2 points to connect a hose and pump to. One cam lock and ball valve is located at the very bottom of the tank and the other at about 4-5" up on the side. Notice also that the tank is on a forward incline slightly so any silt or water will migrate to the lowest part of the tank at the front where my valves are. Water will always be at the lowest point as oil always floats on water. This is true also in previous totes as they settle. If your using a bottom accessible system with ball valves like these shown at the bottom of tanks, always make sure to drain off any water before winter sets in...water in these valves can freeze and break your valves causing the oil to drain out once it warms back up. If this happens hopefully you will catch it when the creamies and silt are thick, or you will have one hell of a mess on your hands. If you spill oil remember its veggie oil and or fats and is biodegradable so unless its a huge amount its only a problem because of the mess.

Once this final settling stage is done I pump it into yet more totes for long term storage or to make into bio-diesel. This oil is for all intents and purposes as good as any new oil fresh pressed from oil crops to make bio-diesel out of. It may seem to be a lot of pumping but remember pumping oil is not a lot of work for me, it is for the pump, i just have to stand around and watch it to make sure nothing gets over filled or spills. NEVER LEAVE A PUMP UNATTENDED PUMPING OIL, I can not stress this enough...as soon as you do Murphy's Law sets in, I need say no more.

Notice also my nifty clear poly sight tube so I can view tank fluid level at a glance on the black 600 gallon tank. This also serves as a good indicator as Im pumping so I don't over fill the tank. Sight tubes of this type will react slower then your pumping, so always stop the pump when close to the top and let it adjust before adding more. This will help you save your valuable oil stock and lower your loses.

Here is a few more pics.