Right, I have heard about using a glyc pre-wash prior to reacting to reduce water content, especially if using solid WVO as the source oil. I have a 25 litre drum of Glycerine (no methanol recovery, simply allowed to breath to atmosphere till cooled and cap tightened) left over from my last batch and want to give it a go. Is the process easy to carry out?
I made a separate dewatering tank using a 45 gallon steel drum with immersion and tap. However, when I heated a mixture of solid WVO & liquid WVO and allowed to cool I found that only oil drained from the tap rather than water. Hence I feel a Glyc pre-wash could be required to guarantee that the WVO is sufficiently dewatered.
My waste Glyc is made with Potassium so liquid at room temperature. I propose adding my WVO to my reactor, heat to 50 deg and then add the Glyc. Maintain temp at 50 deg and circulate for 1 hour. Allow Glyc to settle and drain along with any waste water.
Following this I'm led to believe that I need to carry out a 10/90 test. Correct me if I'm wrong but I then add 10ml of the oil from the reactor to 90ml of methanol, shake, settle and evaluate results. Depending on the % fall out and the titration results depends on the quantity of catalyst to introduce to the WVO???
Then add catalyst and react WVO. Wash and dry as per normal practice.
Again correct me if I'm wrong here:
Example 10/90 test; if once settled there is 1ml of WVO in the test tube does that then conclude there has been a 10% conversion? Do you then reduce the quantity of Potassium added to the Methanol by 10%??? Do you also reduce the quantity of Methanol by 10% too or simply the Potassium???
A step by step guide would be a really good addition to this site and based on the apparent knowledge on offer it would be pretty straight forward.
