Your Questions About Biodiesel Processor

admin answers:

You are talking about a conical bottom tank. That’s pretty much what they’re called. It just provides some restriction to volume. During producing biodiesel it is required to make several separations based on phase (not liquid/solid, but different solubilities of liquids). The cone bottom of a tank allows a lower volume of liquid to show at a higher level. By doing that, you can watch more carefully when making this cut to avoid keeping to much junk in your process or throwing away to much good biodiesel.

If you want to save some cash on that and are only making relatively small amounts at a time (100 gal or less) take the normal vessel you are using now and put it on an angle, maybe 30 degrees. As long as you are able to tap and place a new drain at the new low point you have accomplished the same thing.

Note: if you decide to use this method make sure to provide support for the tank, I don’t want you spilling oin and diesel all over the place.

admin answers:

I am pretty sure my answer is not really an answer, more of an observation: Usually when people ask questions and claim to be college students, it is obvious from their typos and level of insanity that they (I hope) are not. You however appear to have an inteligence. I like where your going and I like where your head is at.
You should patent and copyright anything you can. Make the patent application and if you get it great! It does not matter if it is someone else’s idea first, what matters is who gets the proof of it i.e. The patent, first.
You should incorporate, just to settle any future disputes between you and your partners. Also easier to get investment capital.
If you can find an area outside of a city ‘proper’ try that. People in the ‘country’ are often less concerned with petty things like ‘liability’. The chemicals your using arent really ‘dangerous’ are they? I mean, no more dangerous than windex, right? I know windex is very dangerous when used improperly, but then again so is common H2O, right?
Also, have you considered building/installing conversion kits or building vehicles to sell? You know, create your own customers?

The people who throw up roadblocks, like ‘we cant rent to you because of the chemicals.’ Ask them what it would take, what insurance or inspection/audit process could be implemented to get through these problems.

Oh, and yes get an attorney, at least to help with the incorporation. They can probably point you in the direction of an attorney that has experience with the EPA or chemical related law.
Also get a CPA, someone to help you with the taxes, not so much the fileing but to tell you what things you need to do to protect your money. The CPA will tell you things like “You can buy a cell phone with your after tax dollars and write off a small amount of it for business purposes, or the company can buy the cell phone for you and pay for it with ‘pre-tax’ dollars. Either way you get a cell phone.

Good luck, and help save our American Culture.

“If gas is going to cost more than 99cents a gallon, bring our troops home because they are not ‘protecting American interests’”- JackinIraq 2007.

admin answers:

Waste of time, you might get one drop of oil out of two tons of algae. If any.

admin answers:

Gyro means to spin. Therm is heat. Put them together and there ya go.

A spinning object causes friction and therefore thermal enegy.

admin answers:

I have worked in the food industry for many years, and I have not worked at a single place that has used their leftover fryer oil to convert to biodiesel. Unfortunately, t’s probably not happening as much as they say it is.

admin answers:

In developed countries, waste grease is collected and transported to rendering plants where it is refined to a commodity called “yellow grease”. Most yellow grease is incorporated into animal feed, although a small but growing portion is bought as a feedstock for biodiesel plants.

The amount of waste grease that is ultimately converted to fuel will be governed by the market price of yellow grease, and how it compares to the price of new oil, and to the price consumers will pay for biodiesel. The price of yellow grease will be influenced primarily by the cost of animal feed.

To get back to your question, the volume of fuel made by small producers is very small. This is not to say that home-brewers aren’t important! To the contrary, it is what they have started that has helped bring the strength of public opinion to bear on the market. By their example, some of their neighbors and some businesses now would prefer to buy biodiesel. This has provided a customer base on which to build an industry which will have the scale an efficiency to make a much larger positive impact than individuals could do on their own.

admin answers:

Both Nata and Ron are right, it can be very expensive or very cheap to make bio-diesel.

Most of the methanol is only there to disperse the NaOH so that hopefully only one or two NaOH molecules encounter any given oil molecule as the idea is for it to react with hopefully a center portion of the oil molecule cutting it in half, the NaOH forms a glycerine with the center portion and the two shorter chains are esters. The idea is to reduce the average chain length of the fuel from the 18 to 35 carbon atoms lengths found in used vegetable oil down to about 11 or 10 carbon atoms.

You estimate the average chain length by measuring the specific gravity and you determine when all the NaOH has finished reacting by measuring the ph with litmus paper.

The methanol is “washed” out by mixing water into the mix which causes the methanol and water to precipitate out.

Obviously, if you recover the methanol then your costs can be greatly reduced though it may take some distilling to ensure the purity of the methanol, purity is only an issue in terms of reproducibility so that you can calculate the proportions accurately, if you’re willing to do more titration tests to adjust the proportions then you may not care about the purity of the methanol.

If you use too little methanol presumably to save money, you will probably produce more glycerin by the time you’re through as each oil molecule will likely react with more NaOH molecules due to the higher concentrations which also means your yield of diesel will be much lower.

Also the quality of the original oil affects how much additional processing must be done to make it acceptable as bio-diesel. It’s quite possible that two different people would’ve experienced very different economics while experimenting with bio-diesel at home.

admin answers:

How about a website?