Oil heating/methanol recovery

Gregg B asked - who is working on Methanol recovery?

That is another Felix project.  Zac and I did a great job boiling some oil about 6 weeks ago. We got some water out of it as well.  

I would dearly like to see Amanda and/or Greg Rhode take this on as a lead.  We need someone with this level of chemical background to be sure that safety awareness is brought to this important and delicate task.

Although we can experiment with the water heater initially (outdoors), we need to find a device that will control the element in the heater without an open contactor - either remote or explosion proof. this will be important since we will need to have the still in the same location as the methanol storage from an isolation perspective.  Pete Kramer, Greg or Ron will have comments on that kind of hardware.  I have seen some solid state devices with analog I/O that will control 20A @ 240 volts.  Unless UL rated as intrinsically safe, they may still need to be 25' away from the tank.  Figure $200 - $500 to finalize this type of controller.  These may be also available from the online medium density electric element supplier (forget the name).

I will meet with whomever wants to take this up as required.

PETE K, please put this on the outstanding projects list.

Sorry I haven't followed up on this one, but site issues are bigger right now.  I believe we will start some strategic planning activities soon and I will take project direction from that effort.

Thanks to all,

Felix