Simple Bio=diesel ????

[Joe Leising]

My neighbor has a couple of aprox 10 gal stainless upright tanks. Will these make good processors? What mods would make them "perfect"?

Which is the more preferred NaOH, or KOH to mix with methanol?

Does anyone her "boil" the Methanol out of the soap to reuse?

If you sad yes to any of the above please respond either through this post, PM, or e-mail.

Thanks
Joe

[Tony Turner]

My neighbor has a couple of aprox 10 gal stainless upright tanks. Will these make good processors? What mods would make them "perfect"?

Which is the more preferred NaOH, or KOH to mix with methanol?

Does anyone her "boil" the Methanol out of the soap to reuse?

If you sad yes to any of the above please respond either through this post, PM, or e-mail.

Thanks
Joe

The satinless tanks will work great. If they don't already have a cone shaped bottom it would be nice if you added it. I just use regular 15 gallon "greese cans. I have a drain that I've welded into the bottom then about 12 inches up the side I welded a 1" coupler to screw my heating element in and a quarter of the way around the tank fron the element I welded a coupler that runs to my pump. If you are so inclined, you can add another coupler 10 or 12 inches from the top of the tank for your return line. My return line is a "J" shaped section of pipe that I hang over the top of the tank (seems to work well). If I build another processor I'll weld in the return line because it looks neater.

I use NaOH because I get it for free and also because that's how I learned to make it. KOH is harder to find so I just never tried it.

The correct term is glycerol, not soap (you need to add a little water to make soap). I have never boiled it to collect it but I have heated it under vacuum and collected it. It will set up like concrete if you don't get it out of your reclaiming vessel as soon as you're done. My collection system was very "mickey mouse" but it worked and when I go back to making larger quanities again I'll build a better system to deal with reclaiming the methenol.

It's easier to recover methenol from the bio-diesel. Look at htis setup http://home.swbell.net/scrof/Biod_Proc.html

To see several different ways to make your processor follow this link http://www.journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_processor.html look close at the Deepthort 100B, Pelly Model A, and all the Fool proof designs.

Joe here are a few links that will show you how other people are doing it. Note* Notice the parts that are common to "ALL" methods, they are what you want to do.

http://www.journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_make.html

http://www.biodieselcommunity.org/index.php This is one of the best sources of information about bio-diesel I've found but at times they make it sound harder to make than it is. It took me longer to type this than it would to start a batch of bio-diesel.

Later,
Tony T