Electrostatic Biodiesel
Originally uploaded by mikeysklar
Today I tried a rather dangerous experiment. I tossed a high voltage power supply into a freshly mixed batch of biodiesel. There are videoson you tube and discussions in forums on this topic. The goal is to separate the glycerin and get it to the bottom of the container as fast as possible. My small test cases from today show me that indeed high voltage does offer a significantly faster reaction. The soap drops to the bottom in minutes instead of hours when a high voltage charge is applied. I'll post a video soon with more details. Has anyone else experimented with this? The attached photo was taken 15 minutes after mixing the methoxide with the filtered waste oil. On the left is the bio + high voltage zapper on the right is the control (straight b100).
6 comments:
I've been a lurker on your blog for a while, and I have to ask - how/when in the process do you filter the veggie oil/glycerin? A friend makes biodiesel and gives me the... chunky, unfiltered glycerin. I've yet to make soap with it because I'm still tinkering with filtration processes. Thanks for such an awesome, informative, desert-dwelling blog!
I let the glycerin settle for weeks. Then I just pour off the biodiesel into our fuel tanks. The glycerin is contaminated with methanol so using it for soap would require additional cleanup. I've never tried that part. I combine all the glycerin and save it for burning in a outdoor fire pit with wood shavings.
I take it your veggie oil source doesn't have random bits of unidentified (but sometimes burnt grub-esque in appearance) stuff in it to begin with?
I've also let the glycerin settle; occasionally a batch will have a white layer floating at the surface - would that be methanol? I'd hate to evaporate the stuff, but I'm not sure how else to get it out.
Love the idea of 'helping' the wood chips out, if only we'd get some rain to put out the fires here and help the burn ban!
Hey Mike, very interesting post. I have one question; how much energy was spent applying the high voltage current over the time needed to fully process the fuel in this step? I'm wondering how big a percentage of energy is invested in this step for the total realistically available in the fuel itself.
Hey Mike, very interesting post. I have one question; how much energy was spent applying the high voltage current over the time needed to fully process the fuel in this step? I'm wondering how big a percentage of energy is invested in this step for the total realistically available in the fuel itself.
@joe: I think it draws less than 1W of electricity. I only ran it for a hour so 1 whr. I'll measure it next time.
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