on wednesday i made a 5 gallon test batch of sort with my new KOH flakes. it disolved much better in the methonal and after settling it seamed to look really good. the system i have uses Purolite with a filer and i run it through. well after running it for a bit i took the 4 gallon i hade made and did a water test. (Half water half bio and shook it up) it took forever to seperate and when it did i had a very large amount of soap inbetween the bio and water. stupid me though thought i would be ok to put the 4 gallons in the truck befor i let the stuff settle. i can really notice it being in the lines right now! i have a sigificant power loss and when i rev it it pops and white smoke come out for a sec. is this because i may have plugged the fuel filter and it needs more fuel? i used to have fuel all the way to 4k but now it seems to run out at about 3200.

i did a 40 gallon batch yesterday and the results came out much better after the test. the bio and water almost imediatly seperated but after a half hour i had about a 1/4 inch of soap. i uses a 24oz bottle by the way and put 150ml of water and 150 ml of bio in it.

do you guys think i will be ok driving on it. im building a water wash tank next week but the second time i washed the bio in the purolight i could read a newspaper through the bio in a glass jar.

Sorry for such a long post im just a little worried about going on a 150 mile trip today.

 

Ive never used magnesol or any of that stuff so im not sure how well it works. When I make a batch I drain the glycerin and a little of the good biodiesel along with it. Then I wash it until I get clear water of the same Ph as what went in.
usually I get a LOT of soapy suspension that looks like chicken soup. After a few washes it goes away. I still cant put my finger on the cause for needing so many washes. The ingredients are good and the oil is dry enough that i cant get any water from a vacuum flash. I assumed it was some cleaning chemicals or something. acids and alcohol did not help break the emulsion. only washing and time.
Since I wash I need to put it through a vacuum flash treatment to pull out the water.
Ive noticed that with any water left in the fuel, I get bits of gunk that drop out and soapy looking stuff that settles. Your absorbent media might not be catching everything.
you might try the 3/27 test:
http://www.biodieselcommunity.org/methanoltest/
another good test might be filtering a whole batch thru an aqua-block filter and see if the fuel improves or clogs the filter with water.

 

so i changed my filter out and the motor still pop when i rev it. also white smoke comeout when i do that. i wonder if its the fuel or if i have plugged up and injector? i am going to ad some #2 to the mix befor i leave hopfully that will help.

btw the fuel in the fuel filter canister was black almost. is that the crap in the tank coming out with the bio?

 

Yes, it's the fuel system puking up its million miles of #2 "settlin's".

If you're making that much soap, make a fresh batch of titrating solution and redo your titrations. It sounds like you're way rich on the KOH.

Instead of going straight from reaction to draining glycerine to running it through purolite, have you considered a prewash? I've been doing it for about 6 months, and it's really superior to magnesol/amberlite/purolite or a water wash.

When you do the reaction, run it for 2 hours. 20 minutes before you shut it off, add hot water to the tank in an amount of 5% of the total volume in the tank. Example: if you have 48 gallons in the reactor, add 2 1/2 gallons of hot water. Then let it run for the remainder of the 20 minutes.

98% of the glycerine will settle out in an hour or so, taking with it most of the unreacted methanol and lye (or KOH). At that point, you can do the purolite thing, or try a "waterless wash" which is as simple as using a pump to recirculate the bio, spraying it against the wall of a 55-gal drum.

The theory goes (and my experience bears it out) that the soaps are soluble in water or alcohol but not in biodiesel, and will settle out. NaOH seems to make a thick jellylike soap that is great for washing greasy hands or degreasing parts, while the KOH seems to make a thin, runny soap with a consistency like dishwashing liquid.

It's much easier to reclaim the soap from "the bottom of the barrel" if you use NaOH because the boundary layer is well defined. Not so much with KOH.

Do a search over at the biodiesel infopoop site for "Graham Laming method" or GL method. He's the dude who pioneered the theory.

Best luck!! PM me if you'd like further discussion.

 

We amke 250 gallon batches. We let the fuel set for12 to18 hours before we drain the glycerin off. We don't water wash. We use Purolite witha lead-lag setup. I've run probably about 600 gallons of B100 through my 6.0PSD. Keith