Completed first batch. titrated @ 5, used 1600 grams of KOH with 7 gallons of methanol & 32 gallons of dewatered oil. Ended up with a little over 30 gallons of Bio and over 8 gallons of glycerine. Will distil the methanol off both the glygerine and the bio tomorrow... Anyway does this sound ok so far?

 

Sounds good to me! Did you try the Varnquest 3/27 test to see if you got full conversion?

 

Plan on doing that today after distilling off the methanol

 

Distilled the bio yesterday, looks pretty good, even before we wash. After 1.5 hours @ 145 degrees we only got about a little over a half gallon of methanol. It appears most of the methanol is in the glycerin, we will distill that later. Is this normal?

thanks

 

Most of the excess Methanol IS in the glycerol. Are you going to waterwash, or use Magnesol?

 

Well... I'm trying to talk my partner into drywashing but... Water isn't any fun to use when it's Zero. I'm hoping that he'll see that too. Anyway converting the 60 gallon cone to dry wash would be easy...

 

I suggest running the 3/27 test before cooking off any methanol. If you do have a failure and the fuel is unwashed and not de-methed, you can heat and add 1.4g/l of KOH and 25-35 ml/l of methanol and re-react.

A couple of biodiesel friends and I have also had some bad batches lately and found it to be the quality of the KOH. I had to move my base amount up to 9.9g/l, corrected for 90% purity KOH. That appears to have solved the incomplete conversion problem.

 

I think that I used 91% purity in calculation. Thanks for the tip, the batch is still sitting in the reactor, we had a artic front go through and temps around zero, so waiting to warm back up (Tues supposed to be above freezing again) Will forward this info to my partner.

 

The KOH purity will be on the bag, so different supplies will probably vary. Making biodiesel always presents new things to learn and new problems to solve. I sure am glad we don't have that kind of cold here in GA!

Two other things I have learned are:

Pre-treating your oil by heating it and mixing in approximately 20% (by volume) of the glycerin drained from the previous reaction will significantly clean up your oil, remove water (but not if present in excess), and lower the titration. Just heat the oil to about 120F, add glycerin, mix for a couple of hours, and drain the glycerin back off. Then titrate and react as normal. My oil usually titrates 5-6, but lowers to 0.5-1.0 after doing this.

Don [(fabman) thanks Don] gave me this tip: After the reaction is complete as determined by the 3/27 test, demeth the biodiesel and let it settle for 24-48 hours. Soap and glycerin that would normally need to be washed out will settle and you can decant the fuel. Using this method has allowed me to cut my Magnesol use to 2-3g/l.

I decant the fuel and mix Magnesol with a paint stirrer for a couple of hours, settle overnight and filter. I bought a bag filter housing from Fryer to Fuel that allows me to use 1 micron absolute filters and it has been one of my best investments. I have few biodiesel pictures at: Biodiesel - a set on Flickr

 

I like to use this calculator for my batch's it allows you to adjust for purity.

Matts Recipe Calculator

 

I'm assuming that the 20% is not de-methed, or do you distill it than re-introduced? thanks

 

Also this is 20% of the Glycerine that drops out, not 20% of the volume of oil right?

Suppposed to be back up in the 40's in a couple days, so plan on finishing this batch and starting the next... thanks