How often do they make mistakes???
Would they dump it down the drain if you weren't there???
We don't make the oil. The mistake was someone over filled a transfer tank by forgetting about it, and well, it overflowed into a containment area, and so they cleaned it up, and set to dispose of it. We would usually just mix it with compost material and send it off to the dump. The city doesn't take kindly to large amount of oil going down the drain.
How often, eh, it comes in spurts. This would be the third time something of this volume has happened this year. Prior years, sometimes once, others, more. Collectively I've got in excess of about 1,500 gallons of Soy / Canola oils stashed at the farm
I've run veggie oil and Bio before; I setup my last truck with a modified fuel system, and such with separate filters, and three inline heaters I constructed using glow plugs in an aluminum block from the tank to the IP. It worked well, until the trans went. Now I've got my Benz, and my 1-ton and it has has some veggie in it, but I've kept it mostly stock because I use it over the road, and I wanted to keep it simple. Less to break hauling horses, or hay, or what not.
I'd take you up on that to get started!
Building a processor isnt really that big of a deal, mostly a couple heaters, a way to mix, filters/ c-fuge, series of tanks, and tanks that can handle the methanol and additives used. I sorta majored in biodiesel production in college so my dream of doing this is probably closer than one would think. I've got this mapped out in my head and the cattle to feed the by product meal too.
Well pack up, and hit the road!
I've had quite the experience with Biodiesel too actually. I had the opportunity to make bio from some of our oils we have at work. Making bio from garlic oil, onion oil, orange oil, rosemary oil, sage, cumin, and the list goes on, then run it in a test engine (a 2-cyl Kubota engine setup on a stainless stand) was quite neat.
and you are correct, a process isn't, nor does it need to be complicated. A simple cone bottom tank, heaters, and some sort of adjuration method. Mine uses a circulation pump that does about 100GPM from the bottom to the top. It is on a 1 hour timer, run, settle drain off the glycerol, transfer to second tank, wash, drain, repeat until the PH is that of the water. If you have access to chemicals, mixing a 0.1% of phosphoric acid with the water helps neutralize the excess caustic in the fuel, turning it into salts which are more soluble in water. Have to be careful though with that, it can mask emulsions if one were to occur. Why it best to the a 10%v/v of Bio in MeOH to ensure you have a complete reaction.
You won't want to feed anything that glycerol. It's nasty stuff, with methanol, catalyst, and soaps. You would need to purify it... heavily. It is VERY crude. I usually compost it. Give it a year in some manure, and WOW talk about some lush grass.
The soaps work great as hand cleaner, engine degreaser, and week killer. (Ask my lawn how I know this the first time I decided I was going to just dump the 50 or so gallons of wash water on the grass)
Jatropha oil looks very promising as a future feedstock... look it up. If you really want to cash in on the consumer markets, Ethanol plant to Butanol conversions, that is the mass industry cash cow. Or build a butanol plant.. or a Biodiesel / Butanol plant .. I am looking for another job.. need an investor or a Plant Manager???
