Fench Fry Oil Reactor

[Saki Steve]

Well For those of you that don’t know, I’m currently in the process of building a Bio-Diesel Reactor. I figured that I would start up a DIY thread on it. If anyone is interested in learning it. So far my father and I have started to build what is called “Touch less Processer”. We currently have all our oil drums and washing tanks modified ready for use. But I have to build a Frame and stand before we can start plumbing the piping. This setup we have only bought a Pump, and a heater element. There is only about $100 into this project, most of the parts so far have been salvaged from junkyards. And even the frame I think I will be building out of old free bedrails.

This is a Photo of a finished reactor setup.



I will upload photos of my setup when I get a chance to finish building the frame and finish the plumbing. But I can’t wait to start running Bio in the Jeep.

[sil]

Looks like a meth lab...

Seriously your exhaust will smell awesome.

[Silvia Surfer]

how much will all this run for? how much do you plan to save a year with this?

[Saki Steve]

My only real cost would end up being Methnol and lye, but on each batch i can recover about 75- 80% of what i used , so that would last for some time.

[Silvia Surfer]

hmm.............sounds fun dude. and worth it. keep the build coming im interested.

[Saki Steve]

Three choices
There are at least three ways to run a diesel engine on biofuel using vegetable oils, animal fats or both. All three are used with both fresh and used oils.

Use the oil just as it is -- usually called SVO fuel (straight vegetable oil) or PPO fuel (pure plant oil);
Mix it with kerosene (paraffin) or petroleum diesel fuel, or with biodiesel, or blend it with a solvent, or with gasoline;
Convert it to biodiesel.
The first two methods sound easiest, but, as so often in life, it's not quite that simple.

1. Mixing it
Vegetable oil is much more viscous (thicker) than either petro-diesel or biodiesel. The purpose of mixing it or blending it with other fuels is to lower the viscosity to make it thinner so that it flows more freely through the fuel system into the combustion chamber.

If you're mixing veg-oil with petroleum diesel or kerosene you're still using fossil-fuel -- cleaner than most, but still not clean enough, many would say. Still, for every gallon of vegetable oil you use, that's one gallon of fossil-fuel saved, and that much less climate-changing carbon in the atmosphere.

People use various mixes, ranging from 10% vegetable oil and 90% petro-diesel to 90% vegetable oil and 10% petro-diesel. Some people just use it that way, start up and go, without pre-heating it (which makes veg-oil much thinner), or even use pure vegetable oil without pre-heating it.

You might get away with it with an older '80s Mercedes 5-cylinder IDI diesel, which is a very tough and tolerant motor -- it won't like it but you probably won't kill it. Otherwise, it's not wise.

To do it properly you'll need what amounts to an SVO system with fuel pre-heating anyway, preferably using pure petro-diesel or biodiesel for starts and stops. (See next.) In which case there's no need for the mixes.

Blends with various solvents and/or with unleaded gasoline are "experimental at best", little or nothing is known about their effects on the combustion characteristics of the fuel or their long-term effects on the engine.

Higher viscosity is not the only problem with using vegetable oil as fuel. Veg-oil has different chemical properties and combustion characteristics from the petroleum diesel fuel for which diesel engines and their fuel systems are designed. Diesel engines are high-tech machines with very precise fuel requirements, especially the more modern, cleaner-burning diesels (see The TDI-SVO controversy). They're tough but they'll only take so much abuse.

There's no guarantee of it, but using a blend of up to 20% veg-oil of good quality with 80% petro-diesel is said to be safe enough for older diesels, especially in summer. Otherwise using veg-oil fuel needs either a professional SVO solution or biodiesel.

Mixes and blends are generally a poor compromise. But mixes do have an advantage in cold weather. As with biodiesel, some kerosene or winterised petro-diesel fuel mixed with straight vegetable oil lowers the temperature at which it starts to gel. (See Using biodiesel in winter)

The process
Vegetable and animal fats and oils are triglycerides, containing glycerine. The biodiesel process turns the oils and fats into esters, separating out the glycerine. The glycerine sinks to the bottom and the biodiesel floats on top and can be syphoned off.

The process is called transesterification, which substitutes alcohol for the glycerine in a chemical reaction, using lye as a catalyst. See How the process works

Chemicals needed

The alcohol used can be either methanol, which makes methyl esters, or ethanol (ethyl esters). Most methanol comes from fossil fuels (though it can also be made from biomass, such as wood), while most ethanol is plant-based (though it is also made from petroleum) and you can distill it yourself. There is as yet no "backyard" method of producing methanol. But the biodiesel process using ethanol is more difficult than with methanol, it's not for beginners. (See Ethyl esters.)

Ethanol (or ethyl alcohol, grain alcohol -- EtOH, C2H5OH) also goes by various other well-known names, such as whisky, vodka, gin, and so on, but methanol is a poison. Actually they're both poisons, it's just a matter of degree, methanol is more poisonous. But don't be put off -- methanol is not dangerous if you're careful, it's easy to do this safely. Safety is built-in to everything you'll read here. See Safety. See More about methanol.

Methanol is also called methyl alcohol, wood alcohol, wood naphtha, wood spirits, methyl hydrate (or "stove fuel"), carbinol, colonial spirits, Columbian spirits, Manhattan spirits, methylol, methyl hydroxide, hydroxymethane, monohydroxymethane, pyroxylic spirit, or MeOH (CH3OH or CH4O) -- all the same thing. (But, confusingly, "methylcarbinol" or "methyl carbinol" is used for both methanol and ethanol.)

You can usually get methanol from bulk liquid fuels distributors; in the US try getting it at race tracks. With a bit of patience, most people in most countries manage to track down a source of methanol for about US$2-3 per US gallon.

For small amounts, you can use "DriGas" fuel antifreeze, one type is methanol (eg "HEET" in the yellow container), another is isopropyl alcohol (isopropanol, rubbing alcohol), make sure to get the methanol one.

Methanol is also sold in supermarkets and chain stores as "stove fuel" for barbecues and fondues, but check the contents -- not all "stove fuel" is methanol, it could also be "white gas", basically gasoline. It must be pure methanol or it won't work for making biodiesel. See Methanol suppliers

Methylated spirits (denatured ethanol) doesn't work; isopropanol also doesn't work.

The lye catalyst can be either potassium hydroxide (KOH) or sodium hydroxide (caustic soda, NaOH).

NaOH is often easier to get and it's cheaper to use.

KOH is easier to use, and it does a better job. Experienced biodieselers making top-quality fuel usually use KOH, and so do the commercial producers. (KOH can also provide potash fertiliser as a by-product of the biodiesel process.)

With KOH, the process is the same, but you need to use 1.4 times as much (1.4025). (See More about lye.)

You can get both KOH and NaOH from soapmakers' suppliers and from chemicals suppliers.

NaOH is used as drain-cleaner and you can get it from hardware stores. It has to be pure NaOH. Shake the container to check it hasn't absorbed moisture and coagulated into a useless mass, and make sure to keep it airtight.

The Red Devil-brand NaOH lye drain-cleaner previously sold in the US is no longer made. Don't use Drano or ZEP drain-cleaners or equivalents with blue or purple granules or any-coloured granules, it's only about half NaOH and it contains aluminium -- it won't work for biodiesel.

CAUTION:
Lye (both NaOH and KOH) is dangerous -- don't get it on your skin or in your eyes, don't breathe any fumes, keep the whole process away from food, and right away from children. Lye reacts with aluminium, tin and zinc. Use HDPE (High-Density Polyethylene), glass, enamel or stainless steel containers for methoxide. (See Identifying plastics.) See Safety

Biodiesel from waste oil
This is more appealing than using new oil, but it's also more complicated.

First, check for water content. Used oil often has some water in it, and it has to be removed before processing. See Removing the water, below.

Refined fats and oils have a Free Fatty Acid (FFA) content of less than 0.1%. FFAs are formed in cooking the oil, the longer and hotter the oil has been cooked the more FFAs it will contain. FFAs interfere with the transesterification process for making biodiesel. With waste oil you have to use more lye catalyst to neutralise the FFAs. The extra lye turns the FFAs into soap which drops out of the reaction along with the glycerine by-product.

It's essential to titrate the oil to find out how much FFA it contains so you can calculate exactly how much extra lye will be required to neutralise it. This means determining the pH -- the acid-alkaline level (pH7 is neutral, lower values are increasingly acidic, higher than 7 is alkaline). An electronic pH meter is best, but you can also use pH test strips (or litmus paper), or, better than test strips, phenolphthalein solution (from a chemicals supplier).

You can also use red cabbage juice, which changes from red in a strong acid, to pink, purple, blue, and finally green in a strong alkali, or one of the other plant-based pH indicators. See Natural test papers -- Cabbage, Brazil, Dahlia, Elderberry, Indigo, Litmus, Rose, Rhubarb, Turmeric.

We didn't have a pH meter when we started making biodiesel in 1999 so we used phenolphthalein solution. Phenolphthalein is colourless up to pH 8.3, then it turns pink (or rather magenta), and red at pH 10.4. When it just starts to turn pink and stays that way for 15 seconds it's reading pH 8.5, which is the measure you want.

Phenolphthalein lasts about a year. It's sensitive to light, store it in a cool, dark place.

Don't be put off or frightened away by titration. It's not difficult, thousands of non-chemist biodiesel makers have learnt how to do it without difficulty and use it every time they make biodiesel. Just follow the directions, step by step. See also More about lye, Better titration, Joe Street's titrator, Accurate measurements.

Titration


Keith checks the pH of the waste oil.
Dissolve 1 gm of lye (KOH or NaOH) in 1 litre of distilled water to make 0.1% w/v lye solution (weight-to-volume).

In a smaller beaker, dissolve 1 ml of the oil in 10 ml of pure isopropyl alcohol. Warm the beaker gently by standing it in some hot water, stir until all the oil dissolves in the alcohol and turns clear. (Chopsticks make good stirrers for titration.)

Add 2 drops of phenolphthalein solution.

Using a graduated syringe or a pipette, add 0.1% lye solution drop by drop to the oil-alcohol-phenolphthalein mixture, stirring all the time. It might turn a bit cloudy, keep stirring. Keep on carefully adding the lye solution until the mixture just starts to turn pink (magenta) and stays that way for 15 seconds.

Take the number of millilitres of 0.1% lye solution you used and add the basic amount of lye needed to process fresh oil -- 3.5 grams for NaOH or 4.9 grams for (pure) KOH. This is the number of grams of lye you'll need per litre of the oil you titrated. (Don't worry that you seem to be adding millilitres to grams, that's the way it works.)

Our first titration took 6 ml of 0.1% NaOH solution (not very good oil), so we used 6 + 3.5 = 9.5 grams of NaOH per litre of oil: 95 grams for 10 litres.




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

NOTE: Novices should avoid poor-quality oil like this for their first test-batches with used oil. Find a source of oil that titrates at 2 to 2.5 ml of 0.1% NaOH solution, not more than 3 ml. Leave overcooked oils with high titration levels for later when you have more experience. Again, make small one-litre test batches before processing larger batches of WVO.

[smrotary]

That is some great ass info Saki. Did you write that? If so can I put it on my website? lol

[Mr. Miata]

Holy long post batman!

You need to watch the gov't. They may swoop in and ask for lots of money. They are crazy about the whole bio-diesel thing.

[Silvia Surfer]

once i get a bigger place i wanna build a water distiller and possible a possible a mini beer brewer.

[Saki Steve]

I Need to hurry and finish this thing, Deisel is over $4.00 a gallon.

[smrotary]

Tell us when you do! I want to know how it goes!

[Saki Steve]

Started to piece more of it together, just looking for a good methanol source. it would make my biodeisel about 60 cents per gallon.

[Jamie smrotary]

how is this goin Saki?