New member Snake Oil asks:

 

Is anyone here actually makeing bio diesel?i am making modified used vegetable oil ( similar to bio diesel). I am having trouble with the settling out process. I have been collecting used vegetable oil from chip shops and resturants wich is a mixture of red oil (good) white fat (not so good) and food waste (bad). This is then left in the sun in containers and is then thermically sorted into the three components.The red oil is then poured off the top into the filters and the first stage of filtration is complete.

If anyone has any tips on speeding up the settling out period i would be gratefull.

 

Can anyone help him out with this?

you could filter(just a simple 1 level filter) it before you leave it to separate most of the bad stuff earlier on. finding a way to dissolve the oil and leave the fat and waste is also a potential option but will require a further separation process.

 

ideally for speeding up a settling process you want to centrifuge it but i don't think you'd want or be able to make a fifty gallon drum of used vegetable oil swinging round your garden at 100 mph.

I suggest he looks at this site

 

Link: http://www.wmrc.uiuc.edu/main_sections/tech_assist/biodiesel_process.cfm

I'm reading in Scientific American about the jatropha shrub from Africa being biofarmed for its oily seeds. It grows on fairly dry land. I'm also going to start a thread on terra preta, charcoal as in Amazon lands. Regarding your processing, I watched someone doing this for a few months with restaurant oil. I thought he just did some filtering, then heated out the water. Then there was a lime-added breakdown. There was some minority faction left at the bottom...