Filled my truck with my fuel.

[JoggerFogger]

This is just a thank you to all the people here and their contributions.

It's a good feeling having the confidence to pour my homemade fuel into my $50,000 diesel truck.

So here's the stats off the top of my head for the first batch of fuel:
115 Liters of oil
0.8 Liters de-watered
1.8 WVO titration
27/3 test passed perfect.
10 Liters methanol recovered WBD
1 Liter more from just biodiesel
6-7 days settling
Lye in fuel test passed
426 ppm before hardwood filtering
15.2 ppm after 6 passes through hardwood chips

The only reason I kept passing the fuel through the chips is because I was waiting for a bottle of bromophenol blue to arrive and I didn't have anything better to do.  I was doing the 50/50 "shake me up" test, but getting different results every time.  I think the problem was me using tap water instead of distilled water.

We're having an unusually mild winter here in Oregon, and it's been 5-10C, so I'm just running it at 100% right now.  Well, it's a 104L tank and I added 76L of biodiesel, so I guess I'm running B75 right now.

Here's just a couple pictures, although I've cleaned up since then.  I have a couple questions below that should be pretty easy.




1. What do you use to scoop out the residual soap in the bottom of the settling barrel?  My settling tank has a 10" stand pipe that I've been using to drain off the biodiesel, but now after 3 batches, I want to scoop some out.  There's only 3-4" of soap in there.  Should I just wait until it's 9" deep?

2. I have another 120L plastic barrel that I've been putting the glycerin (glycerol) in, but it has some methanol and some biodiesel in it.  I know the methanol will evaporate off, but I'm not sure how to get rid of the biodiesel.  I'm gathering up some sawdust and chips to make fire logs for my wood stove, but I'm not really getting a solid glycerin byproduct.  Should I wait until I have enough to load it back into my processor and de-meth and separate it out?  or is there an easier method?

Thanks $1M

-Kevin

[Julian]

Congratulations, it's a great feeling isn't it?

I take it your venturi worked ok?

As for your questions ...

1) I leave the soap as long as possible before digging out.  It compacts with time and I find it much easer to dig out solids.  I usually empty the tank of bio with a pump, pick it up and pour out any liquid soap and glycerine, break up the solid soap with a stick and tip that out too, but my barrels are only 100 litres so it may not be practical if yours are larger.

It does sound like you are producing a lot of soap if you have 4 inches after three batches.

2)  I'd save all the bio I could.  Decant off as much as you can.  I often put bio/glycerol remnants in to my oil storage tank, so they go get reprocessed.  If you're using NaOH and the glycerine's not solidifying, even at the temperatures you mention, are you sure you're fully demething in the processor?

[JoggerFogger]

Good advice.

1. I'm not absolutely sure how much soap is in there.  I know at 10" it's still biodiesel, but that's how tall my standpipe is in there.  I was shopping for methanol and I found a guy selling his whole set up including full barrel of methanol for about half price of just the methanol.  My settling tank is from that purchase, and although I didn't have to build it, it's not ideal for moving around and tipping over.

2. I'm sure there's some methanol in the glycerin.  I'm afraid of pulling too much out during WBD and reversing the process. Again, I don't have a ton of experience here, and I'd rather err on the side of wasting some methanol than going backwards.  But I thought it would naturally evaporate just sitting there with the other glycerol.  Maybe the layer of biodiesel on the top is keeping the glycerol from exposure down below?

I'll do exactly what you say.  That sounds perfectly reasonable.  It's just these little things that I'm not familiar with; like using a turkey baster to get that 1/2" layer of biodiesel off the glycerol?  Not even sure how to do that.  Maybe skim it out with a plastic cup?  I just expected it to harden sitting there for a couple weeks.  It's more like jelly now.  These really are just side bits for fun now.  All I really care about is the super awesome biodiesel that got me to work today.  Yeeehaaaa!

-Kevin

[Tony]

Excellent setup!  That's quite some shed you've got there, I'd be happy living in there

1) I just let mine build up, then get a spade and cut it up with the blade to allow me to pick up big chunks and stick them in a bag (being able to reach the bottom of the settle drum helps - to that end I've just got a relatively shallow steel tank which I'll cut the top off to make this easier)

2) Your Lye, is that NaOH or KOH?  Even before whole batch demeth all of my NaOH would go mostly solid (thick sludge with lumps in).  Whole batch demeth ensures this happens very quickly - and even with the most enthusiastic Methanol recovery (liquid up to 95C/203F) I've not seen any evidence of the reaction reversing.  The advantage with solid NaOH glycerol is that it's easy to pour off any biodiesel floating on top.

I understand KOH glycerol remains liquid - I'm not sure what people do to recover biodiesel from this glyc.