Hello Fuse >Just wondering if any of you homebrewers out there have ever taken the >ASTM D6751 test?
Jack Kenworthy did, at the Island School, and passed it, IIRC about six months from being a novice. Tom Leue tried and failed on one count. But Tom wasn't using enough methanol: >My results were good, but not quite good enough. There are 14 parameters >tested under the ASTM standard. I passed 13 of them. The last one was Total >Glycerin: this is basically a measure of the completeness of the overall >reaction,breaking down the oil into methylesters. The standard is >no more than 0.25% total glycerine from unreacted oil. My results >came back at 0.33% total >glycerine. That is 7/1000 off of the standard. Everything else met the >specifications. > >My question to throw out there is what should I do to improve the situation? >I've been a little cheap with the methanol, trying to save money, so I'm >thinking of just increasing the methanol in the reaction from 18% now to, >say, 25%. I don't know if he tried again. I'm sure there are more. FWIW. It seems if you belong to the Big Boys' Club you can send samples off to a lab and it comes back rubber stamped ASTM D6751 compliant but then it turns out there's gunk in it so you send a sample to another laboratory which reports that it's not ASTM-compliant, and you have to recall the whole batch. Though others might just have sold it anyway, what's it matter if it's mostly going to be used at B20 or B5 concentrations, nobody'll notice, and so what if a few whacko B100 treehuggers get collaterally damaged. Rob del Bueno of Vegenergy says homebrew is much better quality than the commercial biodiesel he resells. >Up here in Canada, a lab in Edmonton does the test. It >costs $1400, but the government can help out up to the tune of 70%, and >you can also do specific aspects of the test (free glycerine, etc) for a >couple hundred bucks a pop. > >Expensive, yes! So I'm just wondering how batches that are bubblewashed >make out in these tests? Anyone ever done one? Why bubblewashes particularly? Bubblewashing is gentle and it's one way to mask an incomplete reaction, but there are other ways of checking that. The main problem with bubblewashing is oxidation, but the ASTM standard doesn't include an oxidation stability limit, nor an Iodine Value limit, because they're soy-unfriendly. Best wishes Keith >Fuse _______________________________________________ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/biofuel_sustainablelists.org Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (50,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
