Started another 25gal batch yesterday. Let it settle last night, drained off the glycerin this morning and did a mist wash, a bubble wash, and then a turbulent wash. Looks pretty clean, so letting the water settle out over night. Going to drain the water and dry in the morning. With all the hassle involved with the water wash process, I think I'm going to expedite my plans to go to magnesol method. Thanks to everyone here for a great source of info.
Mike

 

when you go dry, let me know how it goes. We are doing the same thing as you. do you have plans for the magnesol dry wash?

 

Well, it all looked good. Drained the water from the final wash, put my spray bar on my pump outlet, set up my fan, turned on the pump and out of my spray bar comes liquid soap. If anyone has a use for 25gals of soap let me know. This is becoming such a pain and disappointment. I'm almost ready to just cut my losses and start blending. 10gals of methanol, and 5lbs of KOH and all I have is 50gals of crap. I guess I'll keep trying until i've used up my drum of Methanol and if I can't get it right call it quits. There's enough methanol in a drum to do approx 11, 25gal batches. I've tried 2 with bad results. I've got 9 more attempts to get it right. I guess it wouldn't be so disheartening if I knew what the problem was. Don't know if there was water in my wvo or what. Oh well better luck next time I guess.

 

After my 2 failed 25gal batches, I took a couple weeks away from it to pull myself together and remotivate. The other day I decided to start over and go back down to a 2 gal batch in a bucket. It is coming along fine. Water washed today and it's settling now. I am pretty sure that my problem before was too much water in my WVO, and not letting the oil sit long enough after collection to let the water settle out. I'm still in the process of trying to acquire a couple more sources for WVO but not having much luck. The local chinese place doesn't speak enough english for me to communicate with and when I do get a chance to speak with someone they need to call the owner and will call me back but never do. Spoke to another place today and they've had a few offers to pay them for theirs. I guess I need to find out how much oil they use a month and make an offer that will still allow me to make BD for a reasonable cost. With the way these big companies are cornering the market, it's going to be almost impossible to find free oil anymore. If I had started a few years ago I could have built relationships with the owners before it became such a big deal. It's almost to the point of becoming a thief, but then I'd rather pay the high fuel prices than end up in jail.

 

one thing thats really helped me with my batches is letting it settle for a few days instead of over night. with a one liter batch and 8 hours settling, my first wash would turn to pure soap. after 12 hours i had to wash it gently for the first wash and it ended up taking about 6 washes to get all the glycerine out. i let it settle for 24 hours and i could shake like mad on the first wash and it seperated great in just a few minutes and only required two washes total. and thats with one liter. 25 gallons will take much, much longer to settle. when i make a large batch i put it in a black drum on the driveway and just let it sit there a few days before i even touch it. you might give that a try and see if it helps any.

 

the problem ive ran into isnt that restaurants wont give me the oil, its that they wont let me put my own container out back for them to dump it in. theyve all told me im more than welcome to come pump as much as i want to, but i have to take it out of the vat they already have. the problem is, once they put it in the vat they dont own it anymore. so their permission doesnt really help me any. one store owner even told me that he doesnt have cameras out back, gave me the schedule for when the people come pick it up and told me to come by at night when no one was there lol.