Doug, Is this WVO from a food services outlet? Heating it and letting it settle while hot should get the water to the bottom. Caustic is hydrophillic and has to be kept in an airtight container. It could be that your lye became carbonated, meaning you would need to use more than what the titration indicated.
If it were me, I would take 1/4 liter of your goop and add 50 ml of MeOH and 3 grams of lye and see what happens. If nothing add another 50 ml of MeOH and 3 more grams of lye. Repeat perhaps a few more times if nothing changes. Ten to twelve grams of fresh lye is not uncommon with some ugly oils, more if the lye is old and carbonated. Todd Swearingen ----- Original Message ----- From: "DougL" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <biofuel@yahoogroups.com> Sent: Friday, October 03, 2003 3:43 PM Subject: [biofuel] the first batch > We tried making our first batch of biodiesel last night and it seems like it is just a big pile of sludge. We did the titration twice,finding with the litmus that it was between ph 8-9 after 4.5 ml. We did a couple of test batches in a blender with different amounts of lye, 1/2 gm less and 1/2 gm more than what the titration determined. They all turned out as solid goop of different shades of brown. So we did a batch of 60 litres basing it on the 6.25 g/litre to see what would happen. We added 375 gm lye to 12 litres of methanol and mixed them up and then added this to our heated oil and mixed and stirred for one hour. We are not sure what the problem is - we are wondering if it is our lye (it has not been kept in a sealed container-open to the air somewhat) or if our oil has to much water in it (we did not boil any water off first). Any suggestions are greatly appreciated! > Doug Loewen > > > [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/ > > > ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~--> Buy Ink Cartridges or Refill Kits for your HP, Epson, Canon or Lexmark Printer at MyInks.com. Free s/h on orders $50 or more to the US & Canada. http://www.c1tracking.com/l.asp?cid=5511 http://us.click.yahoo.com/mOAaAA/3exGAA/qnsNAA/FGYolB/TM ---------------------------------------------------------------------~-> 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/
