Heat the freaking shit out of it. Use fresh water to carry the reactants away and just dump them into the nearest river. Recovering reactants... that's blasphemy. We'll just bury them next to the PCB's...
Well the method which involves heating allows for the recovery of the alcohol and the byproduct is glycerine which is bloody useful for soap or as a bio-degradable degreaser. So I'm not sure why the "other" method is less useful.
Right now, it's all small laboratory scale reactions like 15mL-50mL. I am working on recovering the glycerine with Silica Gel. I don't have an exact value on the cost/gallon, because if you figure in the cost of the catalyst, it is still prohibitive
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hmm, I'm probably more likely to stick with the Methanol/Lye/Heat process than this one then since the cost is higher. A used water heater is ideal for a reaction vessel, at least for a while. Eventually, I hope to find a stainless steel vessel that could work. ideally a big glass lined vessel would work too.
Having to work with E85 sounds like a pain and has additional stumbling blocks of other chemicals you best not want to handle (constituents of gasoline). Will the E85 contaminate the glycerine that you recover and prevent it's being used for soaps and the likes?
I Need My ChemicalstheevilchemistApril 8 2007, 01:08:45 UTC
These are more interim processes, more for investigation. Cost reduction & scale up will come later, particularly since the Catalyst is recoverable and has been shown to have no loss in efficiency even after 200 batches
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Can I volunteer for this? Seriously. I have a Jetta.
We have no biodiesel stations within a decent driving distance, and I had a friend who was making biodiesel, but he moved to Florida. It's not something I'm comfortable doing myself, not with wee ones about.
Anyhow.... One of my regrets is that I drive an "Alternative fuel vehicle" and don't use alternative fuels.
So, if you ever need a guinea pig, I'm here.
Anyhow... COOL! This is why I should have paid attention in chemistry. :)
Ultimately, I would love to make a machine that all a person has to do is put the oil and the alcohol into each resevoir, turn on the pump and let it flow through little britta filter like cartridges and out trickles biodiesel. Even if you could only make 5gal/week. That could be cut to make 25gal of B20 biodiesel.
This isn't some half baked idea. There are other processes that use this "flow through" concept and it seems quite achievable. One group has done this already, but only the 1st step, not the cleaning/purification up part.
It'd be an interesting experiment to send you the catalyst with directions and see if an "end consumer" could make biodiesel with little chemistry background. That, in itself would be a good product.
Ooo. this is exciting... I rather like this method since when I do it, it would likely only be for me as well, so the rate would be perfect. I certainly won't be opening my own service station or anything.
I'm still trying to figure out what to do with the glycerine at the end. It doesn't seem to be anything you could really sell to anyone or any company unless I had quite a large batch. I know that I certainly wouldn't have any use for it.
Now if you had a separate still with mash to make the alcohol, you could get even more DIY... and you could drink whatever you don't use.
Comments 13
I have MASSIVE love for you.
you use your powers for good & that makes me so so happy.
:>
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jv
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Heat the freaking shit out of it. Use fresh water to carry the reactants away and just dump them into the nearest river. Recovering reactants... that's blasphemy. We'll just bury them next to the PCB's...
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What's the cost per gallon?
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Having to work with E85 sounds like a pain and has additional stumbling blocks of other chemicals you best not want to handle (constituents of gasoline). Will the E85 contaminate the glycerine that you recover and prevent it's being used for soaps and the likes?
Reply
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We have no biodiesel stations within a decent driving distance, and I had a friend who was making biodiesel, but he moved to Florida. It's not something I'm comfortable doing myself, not with wee ones about.
Anyhow.... One of my regrets is that I drive an "Alternative fuel vehicle" and don't use alternative fuels.
So, if you ever need a guinea pig, I'm here.
Anyhow... COOL! This is why I should have paid attention in chemistry. :)
Reply
This isn't some half baked idea. There are other processes that use this "flow through" concept and it seems quite achievable. One group has done this already, but only the 1st step, not the cleaning/purification up part.
It'd be an interesting experiment to send you the catalyst with directions and see if an "end consumer" could make biodiesel with little chemistry background. That, in itself would be a good product.
jv
Reply
I'm still trying to figure out what to do with the glycerine at the end. It doesn't seem to be anything you could really sell to anyone or any company unless I had quite a large batch. I know that I certainly wouldn't have any use for it.
Now if you had a separate still with mash to make the alcohol, you could get even more DIY... and you could drink whatever you don't use.
Reply
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