Keith Addison asks: >A biodiesel question. If you boil off and distill the excess methanol >from the glycerine for re-use, is it in fact suitable for re-use? >Won't it be too wet? I don't even know if water dissolves in >methanol. If so, does methanol have the same or similar upper-limit >azeotropic restriction for distillation as ethanol does? Sure, you >get rid of the water in the oil first, but some water is released >during the transesterification, and it'll be in the glycerine along >with excess meths.
Methanol and water do not form an azeotrope, and therefore are completely separable, at least theoretically, by fractional distillation alone. I don't think you're right about water being produced in the transesterification reaction (it IS produced by the saponification of free fatty acid, but that is supposed to be minimal). Even if there is some water there, fractional or a few simple distillations will clean it all out. -K Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html 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/
