Finest regards,
troy
Based on all your previous posts I was hoping I would hear from you.
I'm still very new to this so the answer to your first question. I'm not sure how to test for water although I brought the WVO up to steaming temp and kept it that way open lid for 2 hours, hoped that this removed all water. All oil is from the same source, to date I have made a dozen small 1L batches for practise and this was my 4th 20L. All other batches seemed to work fine with the exception of one 1L that did something similar but not as much. There was just a little gell near the bottom on that one and it cleared in about 3 days.
Second question (I was a bad boy) Since everything was going well I skipped the titration. I did use same quanities as in previous batches, in short. 6.5g lye, 200ml methanol per L WVO. Guess this is what I get for cutting corners. [ Parent ]
What follows is a copy of a procedure I wrote up for another board. This spells out the water test in painful detail. You probably don't need that much detail, but you'll still get through it. If you did have much water in there, you may have unusable glop. Hope that helps, and feel free to ask more questions.
PS, don't burn the glop, as burning glycerin can produce toxic acrolene (spelling?) smoke unless it's a very hot fire with very complete combustion.
Water test procedure for vegetable oil. You need an accurate scale that can precisely measure weight with a resolution of 0.1 grams (a tenth of a gram). Ebay has lots of vendors that can supply a manual triple beam balance that works beautifully. There are digital versions as well. The scale should have an upper capacity of about 500g or more to do this test well. You could fake it with a top capacity of 100g, but you have to use a much smaller sample and you lose some precision.
Container wt: 26.2g Total wet wt: 335.6g Wet oil wt: 335.6g - 26.2g = 309.4g Total dry wt: 321.6g Dry oil wt: 321.6g - 26.2g = 297.4g Water wt: 309.4g - 297.4 = 12.0g water Water content: 12.0g / 309.4g = 0.03878 % water by wt: 0.03878 x 100 ~ 3.9% water by weight
If I'm careful, and without heroics, I can measure the presence of 0.2 grams of water in a 500 gram oil sample. That would be:
0.2g/500g = 0.0004 water, or 0.04% water.
So even if you're sloppy, and only measure gram amounts, you can still learn a lot about water content with a scale and a microwave.
Summary:
Weigh Heat Weigh again Do math stuff [ Parent ]
What about 1 gallon of filtered (5 microns) waste to 20 gallons of diesel?
G-[ Parent ]
PS Got a scale ordered.[ Parent ]
Anyway, the idea is, you put a liter of oil (or glop) in a 2 liter pop bottle, and then add a bit more methoxide (methanol + lye (sodium hydroxide, you knew that...)). And see if it helps.
You're pretty much screwed as far as determining if you have water in the batch, because if you boil it to check for lower weight, you'll boil the methanol off too. So you won't know if the change in weight is due to the water or due to the meth.
You can burn the glop, but it's got to be done in a nice hot fire, where the glop is NOT the primary fuel source. Think nice hot wood or coal fire, outside, built around a can, to which you add a quart at a time or something. Or you can build a "Turk" burner, which is a forced draft thing, then feed it 50/50 diesel and glop just to get rid of it cleanly.
I have read several sources that say glop makes really good herbicide. And the meth just evaporates with lots of fresh air dilution, so that shouldn't be a big deal. I have no first hand knowledge of disposing of glop however...
Good luck and have fun!
Troy[ Parent ]