Re: Re: moving forward on oil and water

Hi All,

    Not being a coop member  and just a voyeur here, please take my 
comments lightly.

     I only make a few hundred gallons a year hear for our farm but I 
have had a few oil quality and time of year problems that may be helpful 
to tell you about.  I brew outside and our farm is in the West Cascades 
with about 100in/ year of rain.

    I find that in the winter the wet weather and the cold make 
reactions more difficult.   I think this is because 1) during the oil 
drying phase,  it is more challenging to get the oil warm enough, long 
enough to settle out the water and 2) during the reaction phase, the 
mixing ingredients cool down faster during my normal 1:30 hr reaction 
time due to the ambient air temp..  My solution has been to not brew in 
the winter and brew like mad in the summer or only use my best oil in 
the winter.  To keep cost down, I have mixed byproduct in with my low 
quality oil and let it sit for a few days.  This seems to increase the 
quality of the oil sufficiently to allow a colder weather reaction.  
However mixing, in byproduct does tun some of your oil to soap.

     Hope that helps and if not, it is just my 2 cents.  Keep up the 
great work.

Sincerely,
Michael Menzies
Braeside Farm
Estacada, Oregon

Zac Imboden wrote:
> Felix,
>
> We will bubble test the filtered oil after heating and settling.
>
> Here is a recap on the last month's efforts:
>
> WATER IN OUR OIL
> ---------------------------
> We discovered that water in our source oil is causing incomplete 
> reactions. We can make a jar-sized amount of fuel from this oil and 
> then test it using the 3/27 test (mixing fuel with methanol to see if 
> unreacted glycerides precipitate out).
> It is not clear whether this discovery was caused by the cold weather, 
> which, in turn, prevented water from settling out of oil in our 
> storage totes OR whether this discovery was a long term problem which 
> we only found when we  testing for fuel quality late last year. It is 
> possible that this summer, when we were not testing, we were having 
> incomplete reactions and simply did not know it.
>
> THE BATTLE TO DE-WATER
> ----------------------------------
> We have been unsuccessful at settling out water from the oil in the 
> current duo of water heaters we are using. We are not sure if this is 
> because:
>
> ? - we aren't heating the oil long or hot enough
> ? - the oil is so poor quality as to be inseparable from water
> ? - the shape of the water heaters limits water settling out
> ? - the oil has too much water to be removed successfully without boiling
>
> We have tried various combinations but have been unsuccessful. The oil 
> fails the bubble test, even after attempts to remove the water, and 
> the resulting fuel fails the 3/27 test.
>
> Boiling and two-stage reactions
> There are two sure approaches to getting a good reaction. We are 
> coming close to using one of them, because of our failure to remove 
> water in other ways.
> One approach is to boil the water completely out of the oil. The 
> problem with this approach is that it is energy intensive.
> The other approach is what is known as a two-stage reaction, where you 
> react with a portion of methoxide, settle, remove glycerin, and then 
> react with the remaining portion of methoxide. The supposed benefit of 
> this approach is that water will be removed during the first stage and 
> the second stage will result in a complete reaction.
>
> The reason we haven't used these approaches up until now is that one 
> is impractical (boiling) and the other will be more time intensive 
> than we would like. However, if we do not have luck this weekend with 
> our latest approach (see below), we will be forced to try the 
> two-stage reaction.
>
> FILTERING THE OIL
> ---------------------------------
> Our current thinking is that the lack of success in de-watering is 
> caused by the heavy sedimentation in the oil. This sediment acts like 
> millions of tiny sponges which hold the water suspended in the oil, 
> even in the presence of heating.
> We have filtered some oil and we will try heating and settling it 
> during the next 5-7 days and then boil testing. If the boil test shows 
> a reduction of water content, we will make a jar reaction and perform 
> the 3/27 test.
>
> To be efficient, we have tried to address all the de-watering 
> questions above. Specifically, we are looking at the effects of both 
> filtering and container shape. We have 3 "experiments".
>
> #1. Unfiltered oil in a cone-bottom reactor - test if the same oil we 
> could not de-water in a water heater will settle out better in a 
> cone-bottomed container.
> #2. Filtered oil in a water heater - test if the same oil we could not 
> de-water when unfiltered will have better results when filtered.
> #3. Filtered oil in a cone-bottom reactor - test whether a combination 
> of shape and filtration will together make an impact on water removal 
> where one factor alone would not.
>
>
> CONCLUSION
> -----------------------------
> I apologize to everyone who has been waiting for fuel. It has been a 
> long haul since last November when we a) first started testing for 
> fuel quality and b) suspended operations for almost 2 months to 
> perform safety upgrades. A few weeks ago we were visited by two 
> biodiesel specialists, "Girl Mark", who holds biodiesel workshops 
> around the country, and John Bush, who works with a cooperative in 
> Colorado and hosts the annual Local Biodiesel Conference 
> (http://www.b100.org/). They both indicated that the problem we are 
> having isn't just because we are incompetent. It is a difficult issue, 
> which most home-brewers skirt simply by working with higher-quality oil.
>
> We are not currently in a position to change our oil sources that 
> radically. And I believe that we can make good fuel from used, 
> medium-quality oil.
>
>
>
> On Mar 29, 2007, at 9:30 AM, [email protected] wrote:
>
>> Zac,
>>
>> After last night's experience, I believe that what we see settling to 
>> the bottom of the totes and oil containers is sediment, not 
>> neccisarily other fats, or water.  Others may have already come to 
>> this conclusion, but I had not. The oil  that came thru the filter 
>> was so clear - it was very convincing.
>>
>> One thing we didn't do was to Bubble T test the filtered oil (I don't 
>> think).  I would like to see those results.  Filtering to 1 micron is 
>> completely possible and, if it takes out all the water carrying crud, 
>> would be a lot lower energy than heating.
>>
>> Speaking of which, note that there is no real difference in heating 
>> oil up to 130 or 140 degreees then cooling and settling and then 
>> reheating to react to 130 to 140 degrees than boiling the oil to get 
>> rid of the water and using the hot oil for immediate reaction.  That 
>> is 140 - 70 = 70: 70 *2 = 140 degrees net temp rise for X quantity of 
>> oil.  70 + 140 = 210 - just about boiling.  There's just that little 
>> bit of heat of vaporization to add.....
>>
>> We'll see what happens.
>>
>> Thanks again for your hard work on this mess,
>>
>> Felix
>
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