Glycerol prewash temperature.

[dgs]

I've glyc washed for years at ambient. However I do it in ibc's. in the 1000 litre one if the oil gets below 900 litres i add 100+ litres of glycerol and mix for 1 hour with my compressor connected to the bottom tap. I did a mix last week and after 1 day there is good separation. The ibc's are outside and as long as the temp is 10degs or over it works well. The fact that I am using large quantities does seem to help with separation. I have also found that using air to mix is very much more efficient than using a pump.

[Mr Tickle]

Hi DGS

So based on your advice that Glyc washing is all i need to do, when I make my next batch That is all I will do and I'll feedback on the result.

So for 10 years I've been wasting 3 hours of electric and 4 hours of time heating and drying. I don't want to think how much £ and hours that took up.

Although I have now gone from brewing every 2 weeks to 5 times a year (Electric car on drive).

[dgs]

Hi DGS

So based on your advice that Glyc washing is all i need to do, when I make my next batch That is all I will do and I'll feedback on the result.

So for 10 years I've been wasting 3 hours of electric and 4 hours of time heating and drying. I don't want to think how much £ and hours that took up.

Although I have now gone from brewing every 2 weeks to 5 times a year (Electric car on drive).

Yes that will be fine. As long as the water in your oil is either dissolved or suspended (not free water) the glyc wash will dry it to well below a level where it would be a problem.

If you are only processing every 10 weeks or so you have plenty of time to let the glyc settle.

Remember that Potassium contains 10% water and also water is produced during the methoxide making process, so getting the water in the oil down to say <200ppm levels would be a waste of time. 500ppm seems a reasonanbe level to get it to.

Let us know how you get on.

[rumple]

I was draining off the glycerol earlier and when filling the second cubie there was a strong smell of methanol suggesting it hadn't mixed in with the oil. I decided to take a small sample at roughly the 30 litre point and heat it up to see what was going on with it. As you can see I warmed it up to roughly 57 deg C.



This is the result. It's a 700cc sample and a virtually 50:50 split of glycerol and oil/other stuff.



I know others have successfully washed at ambient but for whatever reason it didn't work for me. Maybe it's just too cold for my used glycerol at the moment.

[rumple]

So that went well. I tried attaching photo's but failed miserably. You'll just have to take my word for it.