Re: dealing with wast

On 2/26/08, John Harris <[email protected]> wrote:

> I have two questions.

> 1.  I live in the country and have a septic tank.  Do I have to do anything to treat
> my septic tank when I pour the wast water into my septic system that I used to
> wash my bio diesel?

I also live in the country and have dealt with the same situation.

The waste water is just very alkaline soapy water with methanol in it.
So other than neutralizing the pH in order not to kill the environment
in your septic system, it should be fine.

We previously used citric acid to neutralize our wash water. You just
add some universal pH indicator, pour in a little citric acid, stir
and watch for the color to go yellow. Once the color is yellow (not
green, not orange) you can pour it down the drain into your septic.

> 2.  A while ago I wrote about my wash test when I used 100ml processed bio
> and 100ml water and ended up with a white film between the two. I was advised
> to freeze it.  Freezing was supposed to get rid of the soap, which it did. Freezing
> also cleard up the foggy bio to a clear golden color.  Why did my finnished bio
> become so clear when it was frozen?  What does this tell me about my test bio?

Biodiesel will absorb small amounts of water that can make it look
cloudy or hazy.

Depending on the temperature and the barometric pressure, the water
can get pushed in an out of the biodiesel like a sponge.

You are looking for high clarity, this means you should be able to use
a sample of biodiesel in a test tube as a magnifiying glass to read
small print in a newspaper.

You can remove the water from larger quantities of biodiesel by
bubbling air through it with a bubbler stone for a few hours. However
when you bubble air through your fuel you are reducing the shelf life
a little bit by means of oxidation.

Personally I don't think this is a big deal as long as you don't
intend on saving the fuel for a rainy day and use it fairly soon. If
you are really paranoid about it, you could get a bottle of nitrogen
and bubble nitrogen through your fuel to dry it. I'm told this works
very well and uses very little nitorgen gas to accomplish the task.

If you want to dry a small sample, you could do it outside in a pan
with a coleman stove or equivelant. Please do not do this indoors as
your biodiesel will still contain small amounts of methanol that will
quickly evaporate and is toxic.


--
Jeff Brandt
Sun Break Biofuels, LLC
http://www.sunbreakbiofuels.com
mailto:[email protected]