Diesel craft centrifuges in mobile setup

Shadetreemechanic

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Yes the combo of hot water and simple green is best, but still not great.
I usually take my WVO stuff to the car wash. It has hot high pressure spray. I use simple green full strength, let it soak for a minute or two and then pressure wash it.
The only thing I have found better than that combo is 100% biodiesel, but its hard enough to come by that it seems a shame to use it as a degreaser.
 

Mt_Man

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Turned out the guy ended up only having the oc-20 and not the oc-50 too. Oh well still a good deal. Simple green and hot water did work. It was able to get all the sticky residue off too. Hotel soap on the brush and simple green worked better then just simple green. I soaked the parts in some strong simple green for a while.
I also tried pine-sol, hot water and soaking for an hour-ish. It kinda softened the veggie but not as well as simple green. :Thumbs Up
 
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Mt_Man

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Can these centrifuge be put in series? To potentially make them single pass? Thinking up to maybe 2 or more. Now that I think of it, I don't think it can work. I do want to get a second gravity centrifuge to put in series to see how much more I can pull out from my current set up but that is easy
 

Coopons

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Can these centrifuge be put in series? To potentially make them single pass? Thinking up to maybe 2 or more. Now that I think of it, I don't think it can work. I do want to get a second gravity centrifuge to put in series to see how much more I can pull out from my current set up but that is easy
Could you not run your second centrifuge off the bypass line and use another valve to achieve the correct pressure?
 

ttman4

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For just basic WVO nasty residue clean up I just use regular gasoline, best thing I've found. Gas it, let soak a bit, brush, scrape, or pressure wash..... comes clean.
However if in confined space, or pieces or parts that gas harms, then gas is out.

BTW, where you guys getting WVO now-a-days? I haven't been able to get any in 5-6-7 yrs. Had tons of it filtered & stored/stockpiled but have used what I had filtered down to about 1000 gal left.

I don't have my Fuge set up right now to use but when I did I only used it for WMO. Got about 2500 gal of that fuged & usable & ready to go.
 

Mt_Man

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Could you not run your second centrifuge off the bypass line and use another valve to achieve the correct pressure?
Yah I would think that would work if you pump had enough flow to keep both up to pressure. Maybe valve and pressure gauge for each one so each one would get the correct pressure?
I was thinking the output of one going into the input of the second. But interesting idea.
There would be a pressure drop going though the first one. So maybe have a bigger first one then followed by a smaller second one??
 
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Mt_Man

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Nice stock pile ttman4!
I have only done wmo so I don't know about wvo. What do you think that is making it harder to get? It is harder to get wvo around here because so many want it and biodiesel manufactors. So I started with wmo and never needed to grab up wvo. I really like wmo personally.
 

Mt_Man

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So cleaned up another centrifuge and borax and hot water worked pretty good. But the wvo wasn't as bad as the other one.
 

BeastMaster

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Degreasing...

This is wild ass guess... Hot Lye solution?

Ends up as a kind of soap. I believe the reaction is known as "saponification".

I have no experience doing this though, book learnin' only. Only something I remember reading about once. Might be worth a try.
 

Mt_Man

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Yep I think that is essentially how it cleaned. I was using hand cleaner borax powder. I started with simple green and hot water soak for 15min. It was working good but wasn't breaking up the really hard stuff. Then I thought about trying the borax. Definitely wear gloves. Wvo get really sticky, easy to throw away and start fresh vs trying to wash off. Also strong lye mix could burn you skin, eye pro is also good idea. The borax even kept the brush clean from wvo build up.

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BeastMaster

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Yes, wear eye protection, definitely!

A lot of this stuff we have been discussing here is really strong stuff. But sometimes that's what it takes to do nasty job.

While I think the lye would probably disintegrate the organic goo, I do have concerns it will attack the metal housing. Strong alkali can be just as vicious as strong acid. That came to mind as I saw the pictures posted.

Long time ago, high school job, I used to work at a business that alodined aluminum windshield frames for boats. We used hot lye solution to prep the aluminum to remove all contamination from the aluminum. One fingerprint would ruin the whole job.

Although we could alodyne a wide range of colors, we never did get the art of color matching down pat, and every run was a slightly different hue. One spoiled piece and the whole run was spoiled.

Well, that's what this forum is all about anyway.

Someone shares a problem. The rest of us throw our two cents at it. With our collective knowledge, a solution (pun intended) may emerge, then we all benefit.
 

Mt_Man

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I was worried about the lye being aggressive with the aluminum. What would be a good neutralizer? Vinegar?

Wmo is way easy to clean up.
 

BeastMaster

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I guess weak vinegar would be just as good as any to neutralize after lye.

It always seemed to be an art to me to design a chemical process that did what I want it to do and no collateral damage or make poisonous byproducts.

The more I think about it, especially seeing your concerns too, I think my suggestion about the lye should be considered as a last resort. Aluminum and lye...probably not a good idea. But I will leave my earlier post up as evidence the idea was at least considered.
 
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