New score! 6, yes 6 IBC totes!

[Josh Carmack]

I asked my brother in law a long time back if he could find me some totes, he immediately said yeah. Then I thought I didn't want them, as that was before my black diesel adventures. So I asked again, and for a real reasonable price he dropped off 6 IBC totes all 275 gallons, and all but two were cleaned out. So, now I'm gonna have to figure out how I want to set this whole rig up. I'm thinking I am going to do all my mixing in the totes, and the store in the three 55 gal drums I have now. Right now I'm set up to mix in one drum, fuge in another, and then pump directly from the fuge tank through three series 10 mic filters into the truck. Thinking I'm going to start settling in one tote mixing in another, and then set the fuge up on another. From the fuge I'll pump into the 55 gal drums that will be elevated for gravity feed. Any suggestions?

 

[leswhitt]

I use 4 totes in my setup and could probably get it down to 3.

The first one I use to collect the oil, mix the RUG, and it let it settle.
The second one is for centrifuging the oil.
The third one is for storing the centrifuged oil.

Back in the days of multiple-hundreds-of-gallons oil finds, that's where the 4th drum would come into play and I'd use that as an either an extra pickup tank or an extra storage tank. Now it's just sitting empty and taking up space but hopefully it'll come back into the rotation over the summer.

 

[Brad S.]

Josh nice to hear about everyone's successes.
Just for future planning, those of you that use totes, do you draw the wmo out of the top of the tote or through the bottom valve??
I would guess for all the crud on the bottom it works better to draw out of the top.

 

[leswhitt]

When I first started out, and was on a long trip around the US, I would pull from the bottom. Now that I have the luxury of a stronger pump and having seen the thick sludge that accumulates on the bottom of a container of "clean" oil, I now only pump off the top.

If I ever go back to pumping off the bottom, I'll stick a 8" wedge under the front of my tote so that all the slude would drift to the back.