Recnt score and update for those who care to read

[Josh Carmack]

Well, I have my centrifuge setup on a 5 gal bucket. Used a PS pump off of a 97-f150. Gonna run it on the 5 gal bucket setup until I get the ratios and temperatures down pat then I'll upscale to 55 gal drums. So started looking around for oil, and have scored about 400 gals per year so far, and going to pick up 300 gal this weekend. got another guy that is willing to sell to me, but he wants 1.05 per gal, a little rich for my blood. plan on using a 100 gal super sucker and a 275 gal tote to pickup with, going to blow the oil back out of the sucker into the tote. Using a DOT propane/ammonia tank for the sucker, anyone have any experience as to what hose work best? I was planning on using a 1" - 1.5" suction wand from pvc couple to a sump pump hose for the time being, ultimately plan on using a suction line built for a trash pump. That is if they won't let me take some excess vacuum line from work, we have 1" up to 3" in many different lengths sitting around.

I have the 5 gal setup running as I type, going to run one hour on 5 gals. for a 10 pass go with my 55 GPH fuge. I had to turn a wooden pulley to fit the shaft of the washing machine motor I currently have running the pump.
The pulley I robbed from the alternator of the truck that donated the steering pump will be center filled with epoxy, and the drilled and machined to fit the shaft of the washing machine motor. I would ultimately like to find a source for serpentine pulleys made to fit 1/2 and 5/8th motor shafts.

 

[argve]

sweet. How much does a gallon of oil weigh? I know it's less than 7 lbs so you would probably want it mounted to a trailer so that you can just set up the trailer as the go getter and then bring it home and let it sit and pull from it as you need.

 

[leswhitt]

plan on using a 100 gal super sucker and a 275 gal tote to pickup with, going to blow the oil back out of the sucker into the tote. Using a DOT propane/ammonia tank for the sucker, anyone have any experience as to what hose work best? I was planning on using a 1" - 1.5" suction wand from pvc couple to a sump pump hose for the time being, ultimately plan on using a suction line built for a trash pump. That is if they won't let me take some excess vacuum line from work, we have 1" up to 3" in many different lengths sitting around.

There's no denying that the super suckers work awesomely, but for the relatively small amount of oil that you're moving I'd recommend picking up either a gas powered trash or water pump. Myself and a couple other guys use them and you can't beat them for their out of the box-no mods required-last forever-move a bunch of oil-easy to use qualities. I use a 1.5" HF model and can move just over 10 gals a minute when I'm picking up heavy stuff and faster than that when I'm picking up lighter stuff. You'll be up and running for ~$150 if you're able to wait and shop around, you'll be able to sell it when you're all done to a larger audience, and it doesn't take up nearly the space that a super sucker does.

 

[Josh Carmack]

I have my 100 gal tank, two drums, and a tote all mounted on a dedicated trailer right now, I don't like the idea of that trailer being dedicated, so in the long run I am going to mount it on metal skids and then slide the whole assembly on and off. The convenient thing is, the tote and two drums were already mounted on the trailer. I used the trailer on the farm when we are doing dozer work, filled the tote with water for washing out the radiators and finals etc with the power washer, and the two drums to haul diesel in. I have some aluminum rolling skids that are going to be re tasked to make an assembly that rolls on and off the trailer as needed. Leswhitt, any reason for you preference for pumps vs vacuum? Do you leave the pump primed with hoses attached, or attach and prime each recovery session? I have a 2" trash pump from northern tool that I used to jet a few shallow wells with, but 2" would move oil faster than I can deal with it. Plus I like the idea of having to jet another well or two when I get ready for another go at it, so I aint gonna reassign its duties yet.

On another note, a valuable lesson learned last night, DO NOT disassemble your centrifuge over the top of the cleaned oil you just processed, lets just say the hole batch will need to be filtered again. It did allow me to see the great difference in the clean oil in the bucket, vs the dirt, and oil that was still in the centrifuge. There was a visible difference in color and feel with the oil in my bucket being a reddish black, and the oil still in the fuge being carbon black.

 

[Smoky12v]

I have the 2" semi-trash (can handle some solids) gas powered pump. I personally think a trash pump will be a great pump to have because you may never know what they have put in the holding tank. I never had a "super sucker" but what i've read, it sounds like a great tool but will be much less mobility than what I have, unless it's on a dedicated trailer. I just need the gas pump, a 275 gal tote and some hoses and wand, which I can load everything in back of my truck by myself (tote empty of course) when I go to pick up waste oils. My pump is 2" but I adapted it down to 1.5" to use the cheaper 1.5" hoses and be able to fit through the 2" bungs in most barrels, holding tanks, whatever that I could encounter at the pick up. The gas pump move the waste oil plenty fast, it can't be "too fast" really. IF it's too fast for you, you can always reduce the gas pump motor speed or use some valve to throttle the flow but I don't see that necessary. I am planning to make a dedicated small wand that have valve on it to go on my discharge hose where I can stop the flow so I can easily fill up barrels to barrels in my garage from the tote sitting in back of my truck without turn off/restart the pump or accident overflow drums.

IIRC one gallon of waste oil weights around 7.334lb, so 275gal*7.334lb/gal= ~2,016lb. My truck handled over one ton loaded with oil and equipments just fine.

by the way, DONT BUY "Discharge hose"! it was a waste of money for me because they kinks and restrict the flow significantly. Buy the "suction hose" type, the ones that won't collapse when used on the suction side of the pump, use that on the discharge side too.

 

[Josh Carmack]

Smoky12v, do you leave the pump and hoses primed? Thats my only big reason for not wanting to use a trash pump because they can be a pain to prime, money being the real reason, I'm not going to buy a trash pump specifically for oil when I have two vacuum pumps and a pressure pump , as well as an AC compressor that provides both vacuum, and pressure and only needs a little 5 horse motor salvaged from an old tiller to run it.

 

[bbjordan]

How did you adapt the P/S pump to the centrifuge? I have a 1988 P/S pump I was going to use, but finding a fitting to go from the P/S to NPT has proven challenging. I have gone to three hydraulic shops and they have all measured the fitting as 16 x 1.5 metric, but a 16 x 1.5 fitting will only go in about 2 threads.

 

[Smoky12v]

Smoky12v, do you leave the pump and hoses primed? Thats my only big reason for not wanting to use a trash pump because they can be a pain to prime, money being the real reason, I'm not going to buy a trash pump specifically for oil when I have two vacuum pumps and a pressure pump , as well as an AC compressor that provides both vacuum, and pressure and only needs a little 5 horse motor salvaged from an old tiller to run it.

I have the 6 hp 2" semi-trash pump from TSC. Initial use was challenge to get it primed but after that I never really need to re-prime. The pump have built in fuel shut off valve. When I finish transferring oil, I let the pump running until the gas empties out of the carb and stalls so there wasn't much of oil left in the hoses and the pump but when I use it again, I just drop the wand in and give it some time, maybe for a minute or two then it'll start really moving the oil.

I use the "gator lock" connections. it's a cam lock type that make it easy to connect/disconnect and cap the ends quick to minimize spillages.

 

[leswhitt]

It's the same with the HF 1.5" pump, prime it the very first time by pouring a half gallon of oil down the suction hose and then you'll never have to prime it again. It's never been too fast for me and like Smoky said, you can throttle it down if you need to slow the flow. Of all my pumps, it's been the easiest to control and ultimately made the least amount of mess. And like I said before , the footprint is so small that it'll fit anywhere.

As fir using your existing pump, you can flush it with 5 gallons of gas when you're done and that'll get all the oil out of the pump an hoses. Follow that with 5 gallons of straight water and then follow that with four gallons of water and one gallon of bleach. At that point, your pump and hoses will be just as clean as what the commercial guys use for well digging pumping, etc and you'll be good to go. OR, just use dedicated hoses for your well stuff and use dedicated hoses for your oil stuff.

Everybody's needs are different but for the majority of us, I think the gas powered pumps would be hard to beat.

 

[Josh Carmack]

BB jordan,
I just took the mounting bolts out, and cut the hoses with a knife, the pressure line was a regular 3/8th double braided hose rated for probably 500 psi maybe more maybe less. The braiding was not steel, because my fishing knife cut right through it. I picked up a 3/8 to 3/8 barb and plumed it right up to a 3/8th air hose rated for 250 and plumbed that to the relief and centrifuge. The intake on that pump was 1/2 and it already had a 90 degree barb fitting plumbed into the pump so I just replaced that hose with a PVC hose that was long enough to reach where I needed it. I would do the same for the 88, use the return line to plumb to your tank, and epoxy the lid on so you don't have any unfortunate accidents with the plastic reservoir they put on that thing. The pump on the 97 was a remote reservoir so it was simple. I took the pulley off the alternator and filled the center of it with epoxy. After the epoxy was reasonably hard, i put the pulley in the 3 jar chuck on the wood lathe, chucked up a 31/64 bit in the tail stock chuck and drilled it out. I then drilled and tapped a set screw hole though the pulley and epoxy and forced it on the 1/2 shaft. In retrospect I should have waited til the next day to mount it on the shaft because some of the epoxy busted out when I pressed the pulley on. It worked out great the pump and motor are mounted on a 2X4 with a wooden cage that I stapled and glued together since the washing machine motor had some silly spring mounts for it's original application. The pump has some #8 wood screws and some fender washers holding it on the 2X4.

Smoky12v and leswhitt, thanks for the info, I like the idea of having the trash pump in the long run, as it would free up the space taken by the 100gal DOT tank to put another 275gal tote there. Til I start saving a dollar or two on fuel I'll stick with my sucker.

Progress made since my last post....
cleaned an open top drum out and welded a 1/2" fitting onto the bottom of the drum with a 4"nipple in it to give me a 3 1/2 stand off the bottom of them drum. I takes 6 gallons to clear the stand and start pumping. In retrospect I have decided to add another 1/2" fitting dead center and make it flush with the bottom. I am also going to peen the bottom of the drum into a shallow cone for the centrifuge to run from. I like the idea of the fuge having the ability to draw from the bottom to take all trash out into the fuge. The fuge is mounted inside the top of the drum. I took an old metal stand flipped it over and re purposed it to hold the drum off the floor. Welded some supports to the stand, and welded the drum to the stand, but that was a mistake, because the drum now seeps slowly from the seam where I did the welding. Figure the heat must have deformed the steel slightly as it's not seeping from the weld, but the seam above it. Going to set up two other drums on each side, one for blending, and the other for final product. Going over to the farm to get an old 280 gallon tank and clean it up and build a stand for gravity feed into my trucks. long term plan is to add a plate heater and run straight oil as much as possible, so may have to scrap the gravity feed idea. I think it's kinda slow filtering 10 mics on gravity at ambient temp. Unloaded and rearranged my trailer, going to be the sucker tank, then the tote, and then room to bolt a tuffboxx to hold hoses cleanup rags kitty litter etc anything i may need during recovery. I'm going to suck out the oil from one mans tank tomorrow, getting around 300 gals.

Going next Saturday to pick up three IBC totes from a guy in MO for free!

 

[bbjordan]

Thanks Josh! That is a great idea. I was just over-thinking it.