Students Convert Vegetable Oil to Biodiesel Fuel

Five years ago I helped my granddaughter's 8th grade science class make bioethanol from cotton balls using a multi-microbe cocktail to hydrolyze the cellulose as their class project. We are going commercial with it this year.

I have only heard of small classes being held to introduce those of the public that want to learn about this. I like the idea of teaching kids how to think in an alternative way when it comes to energy. Hopefully it may spark an interest in some of them so they can help transform this country's way of producing and using energy.

As for you filtration, I can understand straining the oil for food particles. I have been doing this for 4 years now. I wait for the final filtration after the transesterifaction process. I find the biodiesel flows much better through the filter than the heavier and more viscous WVO. I also filter to 5 microns instead of 1. I am using my BD to heat the house and maybe the furnace is more tolerant. On the other hand the home heating fuel is not filtered to that extent nor is diesel at the pump. Just my thoughts.

Good luck teaching and remeber the hazards asociated with the chemicals.

Methanol is not your friend...

The fumes or absorbing it through the skin will melt your optic nerves

http://www.amazon.com/SVAT-AL100-Breathalyzer-Personal-Detector/dp/B000AM0G7A

A cheap breathalyzer that doesn't have a blow tube, can be used to checked the air quality.

checking to see if the bio is dry with a sniff test is not recommended...

Hello rlindey,

Are you substituting your BD for No. 2 Home Heating fuel to heat your house? I'm assuming that you have a boiler/Hydronic system there?

I'd be interested in additional information about how you built your setup and how it's been running.

I'm in the process of putting together my 52 evacuated tube solar collectors presently to eventually augment my home heating system (boiler/Hydronic) in the winter months. They're salvaged NASA test beds that I had bought from a ME down in Richmond Virginia. He's heavily into producing BD to fuel his car as well as help heat his house, so lately I've been toying with the idea of producing BD by using the solar collectors (just like him) in the Summer months instead of wasting/shedding all of that valuable heat instead of running an Evaporative Chiller system (have 7.56 kW solar PV system to run the AC unit instead during the summer).

I can imagine I'll run into Building Permit issues here in our residential subdivision as several of the nearby neighbors are the NIMBY type. Some others are just plain jerks. So, how did you steer successfully around these issues where you're located????

Any valuable input (including URLs) from you and others would be most welcomed. So, what do you think? TIA!

Find out what the maximum quantities of the chemicals you are allowed to keep on hand in a residential zone.

sourcing reasonably priced WVO [waste vegetable oil] would be the prime consideration & will make or break the viability of the project. WVO of good quality, the best oil would have only be used for french fries or other veggies, & as little water as possible [water = soap], meat grease or shortening are more difficult to process

another key area is disposal of the wash water, which can get you in trouble with the waste water people

other by products are water that is separated from the WVO, glycerol & solids [food waste] you should do some searches on CR4 some of the members [Rhidley & others] had written up a bunch of stuff on this & there was also a boiler that had been converted to straight WVO

Thanks for the posting Garth. Very informative, and good food for thought!

No problem getting my hands on high quality WVO around here as there's a Godzillion restaurants throughout the entire area + the Culinary Institute of America is right down the road.

Wastewater disposal may pose a problem with my home's subsurface disposal system....may clog up the pores in the gravel trenches. I'm going to have to research this a tad more to see if it's even feasible. There is no dedicated sewer district in this village yet. Construction of a recently approved district is slated for a Fall start, and even though it does get built the district will not encompass our subdivision whatsoever. I'm not holding my breath waiting for any district extensions in the foreseeable future as a whole lot of subsurface disposal systems would have to fail before that would happen.

The water that is used for washing the bio D is laden with methanol. The glycerol byproduct is a decent dust suppressant for dirt roads when mixed with water or can be turned into soap.

if you check with the local restaurants, you will probably find they are being paid $10 or so per bbl or so for WVO, depending on the quality. The price will start going up as the price for diesel continues to climbs. The renderer s are a pretty rough & tumble bunch & can get pretty serious about their money

Methanol is probably going to cost more than premium gasoline & be the major hazard & cost [ it burns invisibly ]

Here's a good resource for homebrewers http://biodiesel.infopop.cc/eve/ubb.x

If you intend on making BD your costs will be high as methanol get very pricey in the winter months. I try to buy in bulk at the end of the summer. This year the cost was $605.00 for 4 55 gallon barrels delivered. My first year I bought piece meal, first barrel bought in early Sept was $150. the last barrel in Feb was over $375.

You're probably right about washing for use in a boiler

a bit of glycerol no problem

no real concerns about flash point or cetane

a much more forgiving application than as fuel for an internal combustion engine

From my experience washing is not always needed. I used to wash but stopped after experimenting with unwashed BD with no noticable difference. That was in my first year of production. I know several other "brewers" that do not wash their BR either.

Galway, New York. Very kewl! I grew up in Burnt Hills NY, about 7 miles from that pretty and very quiet rural village. Happy to see they're doing great teaching there!

Although very small, it's been a great innovative school district for years. One of the best in NYS.

Some engines/turbines can burn just about anything, from peanut butter to shortening to whale blubber. Do we wanna go there?

I teach biodiesel production at the local technical college. We have a 100 gal Biopro 380 automated reactor. We use student interns to run it under my guidance. We send our waste glycerin to the local waste water treatment center where they use it to lube hoses. There are also microbial nutrient additives based on waste glycerin, and many waste water treatment plants incorporate biological treatment with microbes. We are permitted to discharge our wash water to the sewer provided the pH is above 7. They don't want acidic waste since it can corrode cast iron pipes. We get used oil from loal restaurants for free. We have the same filtering problem. We've thought about lining the drum of an old washing machine with fabric, adding used cooking oil and running it on spin cycle to act as a centrifuge. We occasionally get waste methanol recovered by distillation from a chemical process just for hauling it away. We use our biodiesel to fuel the tractors that mow the campus lawns. We also teach the ASTM testing methods for BioD quality.

Hi Wc,

that looks like a nice processor & is able to do the acid step.

I can't for the life of me remember the owners name, great guy, a staple on the forums in 07

Here's the Utah Biodiesel site. a very good resource

Thanks to all for their input on BD production. All info was very valuable and now I'm going to do some more research on the matter, then carefully weight the pros and cons to make a final decision.

I do know that if my next door neighbors got wind of any BD production they'd be up and arms.

I did mention to the Mrs. about possibly doing this and her response was "not another project! You already have too much on your plate now!" Ohhhhh well! LOL

I sent you a private message withsome local info.

enjoy

Thank you very much rlindey for the message. The information that you provided is invaluable!