Re: [biofuel] bubble drying- big correction
Is there not a danger of fire putting combustible materials in a microwave oven? Damian On Sat, 25 Jan 2003, girl mark wrote: Theoretically a backyard test for water content is to weigh a sample, then heat to past the boiling point of water, then weigh again. Someone figured out once that if you do this in a microwave oven, you won't heat (and boil away or whatever) the biodiesel, only the water, which takes care of todd's concerns about boiling in the previous post. I think I still have my two first samples (ie washed fuel that started out hazy, same batch of washed and then dried fuel that started out clear and then reverted to hazy after sitting in a sealed jar for two weeks). If I can find someone with a microwave among my friends I'll try and test relative water content of either. But how much is the weight likely to change? Like I said I haven't done this qualitatively before- so I don't know if the amount of water sufficient to form haze in the fuel is a sufficient mass of water for me to weigh on a .1g sensitivity scale. any ideas on what is the weight of the water if it is present at for instance 1200 ppm in a 100 ml sample of biodiesel? Mark -- Damian J. Anderson [EMAIL PROTECTED]http://www.unification.net Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send Unsubscribe messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
Re: [biofuel] bubble drying- big correction
damian, supposedly the biodiesel doesn't heat up very fast- the person who reported doing this test said that the water boiled off and the biodiesel was still cool to the touch. I'm sure you would want to only nuke it in several-second bursts. I havetn' tried doing this, not liking microwave ovens and all that.. Mark At 03:59 PM 1/29/2003 -0500, you wrote: Is there not a danger of fire putting combustible materials in a microwave oven? Damian On Sat, 25 Jan 2003, girl mark wrote: Theoretically a backyard test for water content is to weigh a sample, then heat to past the boiling point of water, then weigh again. Someone figured out once that if you do this in a microwave oven, you won't heat (and boil away or whatever) the biodiesel, only the water, which takes care of todd's concerns about boiling in the previous post. I think I still have my two first samples (ie washed fuel that started out hazy, same batch of washed and then dried fuel that started out clear and then reverted to hazy after sitting in a sealed jar for two weeks). If I can find someone with a microwave among my friends I'll try and test relative water content of either. But how much is the weight likely to change? Like I said I haven't done this qualitatively before- so I don't know if the amount of water sufficient to form haze in the fuel is a sufficient mass of water for me to weigh on a .1g sensitivity scale. any ideas on what is the weight of the water if it is present at for instance 1200 ppm in a 100 ml sample of biodiesel? Mark -- Damian J. Anderson [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.unification.nethttp://www.unification.net Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ADVERTISEMENT http://rd.yahoo.com/M=244396.2846622.4218523.2848452/D=egroupweb/S=1705083269:HM/A=1414307/R=0/*https://www.clearcredit.com/registration/default.asp?n=bcpID=c01888p1379ckID=gen146285664ea2.jpg 5664f6b.jpg Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.htmlhttp://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send Unsubscribe messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/Yahoo! Terms of Service. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send Unsubscribe messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
[biofuels-biz] the plot thickens was Re: [biofuel] bubble drying- big correction
Continuing in the overly dramatic subject line for this thread vein... Well I went to weigh and then to dry and reweigh the samples I had, and found another annoying and very odd thing. Here's a recap: a few weeks ago when I started experimenting with 'bubbledrying', I had taken some freshly washed fuel that was somewhat hazy, and I had put a hazy sample into a tightly sealed jar, then 'bubbledried' the rest of the fuel until it cleared up all the haze and the fuel was brightly crystal clear. We normally assume that clear (WASHED) fuel is a sign that the fuel has released all of the water that might have been dissolved in it from the washing process. I then put a sample of that presumably 'dried' and clear fuel into a similar size jar with about the same amount of air space as the first sample had gotten, and sealed it tightly as well. I thought it would be good to have the samples to show people the difference between dried and undried fuel. but within about two weeks I found that both samples gradually got hazy again, and this was at a fairly warm room temperature (cold will make fuel haze appear for various reasons, but that's not what was happening here) SO I was going to take both of the now-identical-looking samples, weigh them, then heat them to drive off any water, and then reweigh them to see whether one (which had previously been clear but then re-hazed) actually had less water content. It wasn't going to be a very accurate test because I only had a small sample of each (about 200 ml each). I couldn't do a bigger test because my most recent batch of washed fuel had 'cleared' on it's own in two days (in a sealed drum, at that) without any bubbledrying and I didnt' have any hazy fuel left. the other factors here are that the stuff in the sample jars was probably not the best-washed fuel I've produced, and that I'm boring you all with this cause I'm trying to figure out if the haze clearing experienced in bubble drying is actually 'drying', or this clearing is actually some kind of chemical reaction between something in the air and something in biodiesel (and guessing that whatever that reaction is, it's reversible). ANyway I went to do that weighing bit today, and found another odd thing: one -but only one- of the samples had gone crystal clear (which is pretty normal for washed fuel that sits for a few weeks like this one had) Unfortunately I never labeled which was which (since originally it was 'obvious' at the time which was hazy and which was clear), so I don't know if it was the bubbledried one or the normally settled one. Weird stuff, any thoughts? I will continue with this next time I wash some fuel to the same 'specs' and have some that's hazy... It occurred to me that an extra night of bubbledrying exposed the biodiesel to an extra night of cold and that some kind of tallow esters precipitation happened that the main tank of drying fuel experienced but that the first sealed sample did not. But I had this clearing and then gradual hazing happen twice now with different samples, and one of the times the hazy sample jar had sat outside along with the vat of stuff that was bubbledrying, and both got similarly cold. Don't know if it is at all relevant to the current clearing (at different rates) that I;m seeing in the samples. Below are a couple of replies I got on biofuel and biofuels-biz. One of them is relevant here and the other is just about the measurement I was trying to do today... Mark from David Teal: To: biofuels-biz@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: [biofuels-biz] bubble drying- big correction Mark, When you raised the bubble-dry issue a few weeks back, I wasn't convinced that the main action was necessarily water evaporation. I tend to store samples of biodiesel in capped 2 litre Dr. Pepper style plastic bottles, and had noticed that if an air space is left above the liquid, it always reduces in volume, partially collapsing the bottle. My surmise has been that a oxidation process was at work, where the oxidation products are liquid, and the oxygen is removed from the air. I have also noted that if the sample strarted hazy, it would clear at the same time, not always with a preciptated residue of water or anything else. It would be interesting to test for oxygen depletion in the air pocket. I did try a rudimentary test to extinguish a burning taper (like we did at school chemistry lessons), but this was not conclusive. David T. Biofuels at Journey to Forever http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuel at WebConX http://webconx.green-trust.org/2000/biofuel/biofuel.htm List messages are archived at the Info-Archive at NNYTech: http://archive.nnytech.net/ To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ from Paul Gobert - we were discussing measuring water content in biodiesel by weighing, then
Re: [biofuel] bubble drying- big correction
- Original Message - From: girl mark [EMAIL PROTECTED] snip Like I said I haven't done this qualitatively before- so I don't know if the amount of water sufficient to form haze in the fuel is a sufficient mass of water for me to weigh on a .1g sensitivity scale. any ideas on what is the weight of the water if it is present at for instance 1200 ppm in a 100 ml sample of biodiesel? Mark snip 1200ppm in 100ml is 12/1,000,000ml ie.0.12ml, which will be equivalent to the smallest unit of sensativity on your ballance, very difficult to measure accurately. If you do try this use as light a containor for the BD as possible (beaker would be good). Also try to use a larger volume of BD up to the capacity of your scales in order to improve the accuracy. Regards Paul Gobert, Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send Unsubscribe messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
the plot thickens was Re: [biofuel] bubble drying- big correction
Continuing in the overly dramatic subject line for this thread vein... Well I went to weigh and then to dry and reweigh the samples I had, and found another annoying and very odd thing. Here's a recap: a few weeks ago when I started experimenting with 'bubbledrying', I had taken some freshly washed fuel that was somewhat hazy, and I had put a hazy sample into a tightly sealed jar, then 'bubbledried' the rest of the fuel until it cleared up all the haze and the fuel was brightly crystal clear. We normally assume that clear (WASHED) fuel is a sign that the fuel has released all of the water that might have been dissolved in it from the washing process. I then put a sample of that presumably 'dried' and clear fuel into a similar size jar with about the same amount of air space as the first sample had gotten, and sealed it tightly as well. I thought it would be good to have the samples to show people the difference between dried and undried fuel. but within about two weeks I found that both samples gradually got hazy again, and this was at a fairly warm room temperature (cold will make fuel haze appear for various reasons, but that's not what was happening here) SO I was going to take both of the now-identical-looking samples, weigh them, then heat them to drive off any water, and then reweigh them to see whether one (which had previously been clear but then re-hazed) actually had less water content. It wasn't going to be a very accurate test because I only had a small sample of each (about 200 ml each). I couldn't do a bigger test because my most recent batch of washed fuel had 'cleared' on it's own in two days (in a sealed drum, at that) without any bubbledrying and I didnt' have any hazy fuel left. the other factors here are that the stuff in the sample jars was probably not the best-washed fuel I've produced, and that I'm boring you all with this cause I'm trying to figure out if the haze clearing experienced in bubble drying is actually 'drying', or this clearing is actually some kind of chemical reaction between something in the air and something in biodiesel (and guessing that whatever that reaction is, it's reversible). ANyway I went to do that weighing bit today, and found another odd thing: one -but only one- of the samples had gone crystal clear (which is pretty normal for washed fuel that sits for a few weeks like this one had) Unfortunately I never labeled which was which (since originally it was 'obvious' at the time which was hazy and which was clear), so I don't know if it was the bubbledried one or the normally settled one. Weird stuff, any thoughts? I will continue with this next time I wash some fuel to the same 'specs' and have some that's hazy... It occurred to me that an extra night of bubbledrying exposed the biodiesel to an extra night of cold and that some kind of tallow esters precipitation happened that the main tank of drying fuel experienced but that the first sealed sample did not. But I had this clearing and then gradual hazing happen twice now with different samples, and one of the times the hazy sample jar had sat outside along with the vat of stuff that was bubbledrying, and both got similarly cold. Don't know if it is at all relevant to the current clearing (at different rates) that I;m seeing in the samples. Below are a couple of replies I got on biofuel and biofuels-biz. One of them is relevant here and the other is just about the measurement I was trying to do today... Mark from David Teal: To: biofuels-biz@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: [biofuels-biz] bubble drying- big correction Mark, When you raised the bubble-dry issue a few weeks back, I wasn't convinced that the main action was necessarily water evaporation. I tend to store samples of biodiesel in capped 2 litre Dr. Pepper style plastic bottles, and had noticed that if an air space is left above the liquid, it always reduces in volume, partially collapsing the bottle. My surmise has been that a oxidation process was at work, where the oxidation products are liquid, and the oxygen is removed from the air. I have also noted that if the sample strarted hazy, it would clear at the same time, not always with a preciptated residue of water or anything else. It would be interesting to test for oxygen depletion in the air pocket. I did try a rudimentary test to extinguish a burning taper (like we did at school chemistry lessons), but this was not conclusive. David T. Biofuels at Journey to Forever http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuel at WebConX http://webconx.green-trust.org/2000/biofuel/biofuel.htm List messages are archived at the Info-Archive at NNYTech: http://archive.nnytech.net/ To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ from Paul Gobert - we were discussing measuring water content in biodiesel by weighing, then
Re: [biofuel] bubble drying- big correction
The first thought is to put a quart of any type of sample in a pan and on a hot plate to see what might boil off. But that wouldn't necessarily determine that it's not the biodiesel at the bottom of the pan and in close proximity to the heat source that is boiling (or even minutely vaporizing). A double boiler using biodiesel as the heat transfer medium might yield a more true result as the heat source wouldn't be directly against the pan that your sample is in. I've seen the same clearing effect take place just by putting a 5 gallon HDPE carboy full of biodiesel in direct sunlight for an hour. It would be a fair guess that the micro amount of water in the fuel made the transition into vapor and resided in the air filled space above the fuel, only to be reabsorbed or drop out upon cooling. I'm looking to see if there is a rudimentary way to check for water content that can be conducted by garden variety commoners of the biodiesel persuasion. Todd - Original Message - From: girl mark [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: biofuels-biz@yahoogroups.com; biofuel@yahoogroups.com; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, January 25, 2003 11:36 PM Subject: [biofuel] bubble drying- big correction oops I made a really big mistake in last post. where it says: had taken some samples of both unwashed and some washed fuel and I had sealed them in mason jars. It should read: has taken some samples of both washed/undried and washed/dried fuel and sealed them in mason jars If any of you re-post this somewhere or send it to anyone, use the corrected version below: ** ... maybe that's an overly dramatic title for this post, but... I'm inadvertently started this bubble drying trend a few months ago and now I have some questions about it all. (I got the idea from one of the U of Idaho papers, though it isn't a common practice for some reason). I had spammed all the lists I knew of with the info at the time, with some questions that I still haven't got good answers to. The jury's still out for me on what exactly is happening during 'bubble drying' or 'haze clearing'. My initial questions (about whether clear fuel equals dry fuel) were based on this: I first tried bubbledrying in the middle of an intense week-long rainstorm. I make fuel outside and I had all my tanks tightly swathed in tarps. The humidity outside was extreme. I bubbled my humid air through washed but hazy fuel and in 24 hours the haze had cleared completely. I was at first questioning how this worked at all, in that humidity. Now, it at first doesn't seem too strange. After my list-spamming a couple of people immediately wrote back (one was a chemist friend writing from Nevada in the desert, who tried the bubbledrying right away and got haze clearing in 2 or 3 hours of bubbledrying hot dry air through it) and reminded me that in bubbling air through the biodiesel there would be much more contact between the dissolved water and the air, than with just allowing dry air movement over the surface (which isn't an option for those of us with the rainy seasons anyway, unless you have a shed for drying your fuel). Others suggested that humid air in the rain might still not be it's carrying capacity for moisture absorption and can still absorb more moisture under some conditions, and when being bubbled through the wet biodiesel it absorbs water better than the well washed biodiesel retains it for a couple of reasons. So we put that clear fuel in people's cars and kept doing this bubbledrying practice. But i still wonder, is clear fuel necessarily dry fuel? As has been pointed out a lot, the better you wash it, the faster it will clear out haze, as there is no soap left to hang on to the water. People sometimes insist that exposing the fuel to warm air or air movement is necessary. I pointed out that I have had quite a few sealed buckets of washed fuel that cleared just from settling, with no interaction with air (see below). this makes sense from any perspective of course- though I didn't keep track of how long it took. If it's well washed the water will settle as well as evaporate. Anyway, here's the catch about bubble drying: I had taken some samples of both washed, undried and some washed/dried fuel and I had sealed them in mason jars. The point was to have a couple of educational samples to show people the difference. Well, lo and behold, the samples sat in my room and one day I noticed that the formerly crystal clear washed and 'dried' fuel had become ' hazy' again within a couple of weeks, and I hadn't opened the jar or done anything that could have introduced water, or allowed it any contact with moisture in the air. I had pulled the sample off the top of the tank of fuel and there's no chance that any bulk water got in during that process either. I hadn't previously noticed bubbledried fuel reverting to a hazy state, because finished
Re: [biofuel] bubble drying- big correction
- Original Message - From: Appal Energy [EMAIL PROTECTED] snip I'm looking to see if there is a rudimentary way to check for water content that can be conducted by garden variety commoners of the biodiesel persuasion. Todd What about the old method used to test for water in underground bulk fuel tanks? Anhydrous copper sulphate, is a very pale blue powder, in contact with water it reverts to the hydrous form which is bright blue. Would be a qualitative test not quantitative. Perhaps the water content of std BD would be high enough to give a positive test. Worth trying. Regards Paul Gobert. Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send Unsubscribe messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
Re: [biofuel] bubble drying- big correction
Theoretically a backyard test for water content is to weigh a sample, then heat to past the boiling point of water, then weigh again. Someone figured out once that if you do this in a microwave oven, you won't heat (and boil away or whatever) the biodiesel, only the water, which takes care of todd's concerns about boiling in the previous post. I think I still have my two first samples (ie washed fuel that started out hazy, same batch of washed and then dried fuel that started out clear and then reverted to hazy after sitting in a sealed jar for two weeks). If I can find someone with a microwave among my friends I'll try and test relative water content of either. But how much is the weight likely to change? Like I said I haven't done this qualitatively before- so I don't know if the amount of water sufficient to form haze in the fuel is a sufficient mass of water for me to weigh on a .1g sensitivity scale. any ideas on what is the weight of the water if it is present at for instance 1200 ppm in a 100 ml sample of biodiesel? Mark At 03:53 PM 1/26/2003 +1000, you wrote: - Original Message - From: Appal Energy [EMAIL PROTECTED] snip I'm looking to see if there is a rudimentary way to check for water content that can be conducted by garden variety commoners of the biodiesel persuasion. Todd What about the old method used to test for water in underground bulk fuel tanks? Anhydrous copper sulphate, is a very pale blue powder, in contact with water it reverts to the hydrous form which is bright blue. Would be a qualitative test not quantitative. Perhaps the water content of std BD would be high enough to give a positive test. Worth trying. Regards Paul Gobert. Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ADVERTISEMENT http://rd.yahoo.com/M=241773.2861420.4212388.2848452/D=egroupweb/S=1705083269:HM/A=1394044/R=0/*http://www.hgtv.com/hgtv/pac_ctnt/text/0,,HGTV_3936_5802,FF.htmla9377fe.jpg a9379d5.jpg Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.htmlhttp://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send Unsubscribe messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/Yahoo! Terms of Service. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send Unsubscribe messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
