AAA or is that eh? eh? eh? lol Always Add Acid. Well at least it
will let the oil and water let go of the soaps. Next time make sure
there is very little soap by keeping everything DRY.
Joe
Bis Bisson wrote:
Matt
I made a dodgey brew last year which did a similar thing when washed. A
biochemist friend suggested just throwing more water at it. I forget the
reasoning.
I ended up taking 100 litres and mixing it with 400 litres of water. Got a
separation and from then it was back to normal washing.
Try a 1 litre sample with 10 litres of warm water and see what happens.
Bis
On Wed, 09 May 2007 06:44, Matt Wilson wrote:
Hi all,
Reading Shawn's post today was interesting because I was going to post
myself about a re-processing question.
I started making bio with 1 and 2 liter batches as per the instructions on
Journey to Forever (thanks again for the great site!), and had moderate
success, just like Shawn. I would have a small emulsion layer, perhaps
1/4-1/2" in the first wash. Talking to some local "biodieselistas" here in
New Mexico, they said go ahead and wash it, and if by the third wash it
separates quickly and cleanly, it's probably alright. Well, I got curious
and tried to reprocess a batch anyway as per the directions of JtF:
"If you have an emulsion any thicker than the normal "paper thin" interface
layer between oil and water, the batch should be retreated. Retreat as with
fresh oil, with the standard 3.5 g of lye per litre of oil but using only
100 ml methanol per litre of oil."
My batch separated out a bit more glycerin, but when when I went to wash
it, it turned into "Milk" and, to this day, has not separated. I didn't
think much about it and kept processing small batches until I got one that
worked fairly well.
Okay, fast forward a few months: We built a 55 gal. drum processor and
have done four batches with it. The first one came out with a bit of an
emulsion later (more than I wanted), so I increased the processing time to
two hours. Second batch came out much cleaner. Good wash, nice clear fuel
when dry. The third batch I messed up by miscalculating the amount of
lye...used 3.5g/liter (as per NaOH) instead of the 5.5g./liter I actually
needed for our 90% KOH! As you can imagine, the batch came out pretty
badly! We settled out as much bio as we could and after three washes used
about 25 gallons of this and 15 gallons WVO in the next batch.
I preheated the batch to 140 degrees (to dewater), let it settle for a day
or two, and titrated. It titrated at 1.5, so I used 1050g. of lye (150
liters of oil, and 30 liters of methanol), and reprocessed as per a batch
of WVO.
When I went to do a 2nd wash this morning (forgot to do a bottle test-
doh!), it came out as tan milk. It had settled overnight. There was no
biodiesel on the top- the whole batch looks like a latte!
I am going to try to separate out at least some of the batch, but I'm
afraid to try to re-process again. Meanwhile, I've got 40 gal. of muck I
have to get rid of....
Any input would be welcome!
Thanks for the time,
Matt Wilson
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