Methanol recovery

Friends,

Here is an interesting exerpt from the Yahoo biodiesel list from last 
summer.

Hello Maud,
It does not take a lab to figure this out.

My distillation tests showed that when using 200ml methanol per
litre WVO about 30% of the glycerine layer is recoverable methanol
and about 2% of unwashed biodiesel is recoverable methanol.
and the split is about 2/3 of the recoverable methanol is in the
glycerine layer and about 1/3 is in the biodiesel.

Neutral weighed a sample of byproduct, evaporated the methanol off
and then weighed it agian.
He did the same with a sample of unwashed biodiesel.
Neutral came up with much the same numbers.

If your glycerine layer is 11gal glycerine and 4gal methanol, nearly
27% of your glycerine layer is methanol.
I think all of these numbers are pretty much in agreement.

I suspect you will find that Lyles Lab was talking 19% by mass and
not volume.
Glycerine has an SG of around 1.26 and methanol has an SG of about
0.79.
19% methanol by mass= about 30.3% by volume
Again, this agrees very favourably with the numbers above.

Squire Tilly KE

Hope this will motivate someone to take up the cause of methanol 
recovery.  We have all the parts and we may now have enough water 
heaters to devote one to recovery.  Ron Buckner and I did the first 
experiment this summer, with Greg Rohde giving technical backup.  I 
would be happy to correspond with anyone who wanted to take up this 
task.  It is not simple, and there are strict safety requirements, but 
you can see that the reward is there.  This would also substantially 
reduce the volume of the glycerin waste on site.

Let me know,

Felix