Some good tips guys, thanks. Particularly about the sight tube and middle drain valve. I'll definitely incorporate those.
Craig - why do you use the Bunnings/Woolies bags
and an upflow tank? I am currently using them
without upflow and it produces nice clean oil, but I have the hassles of scraping the fats out of the bags, and the very slow filtering process.
I'm trying to avoid that by using upflow settling to let the fats sink to the bottom where I can simply drain them off. Then I'm hoping the oil coming out of the top is good enough to go through the 5u filter bags without clogging them up. Am I missing something?
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You might want some form of bypass for the 5 micron bag in case it backs up and overflows ?
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Yes I might have a small holding tank for the outlet of the upflow tank, which then can be drained into the filters in a controlled way. Alternatively if I mount the upflow outlet a few inches below the top I can keep the valve off until it fills up (hence the vent), then switch the inlet pump off and crack open the valve a bit to drain into the filters slowly.
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Yeah it is good artwork! Incidently what program/s did you use for that?
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Thanks, I just knocked it together quickly in Fireworks as that is what I have on my PC.
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No doubt you realize that if you mount the collecting tank at or above the outlet of the settler tank, then you wouldn't need the pump or check valve
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Yes I've thought of that but I would have to mount the collecting tank about 3m in the air! I want to keep it as low as possible to make it easier to fill.
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I was using a 200Litre upflow tank for a while and using only the top half of long (months) settled drums, then settling for 2 weeks or more, then into a 5 micron bag and it was immediately clogging the bag with fat.
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Yes I remember you mentioning that Paul, although I've not heard of anyone else having that experience. Was your tank exposed to direct sunlight at all? If so the sun would have heated one side of the tank which could have caused convection currents. Mine will be inside the shed to avoid that. I was also thinking of mounting a horizontal baffle just above the inlet to reduce mixing. Not sure if it's necessary though.
Any more thoughts about pumps? I guess I'll try a drill pump and see how it goes. At least it will be easy to adjust the speed to experiment with. If it works ultimately I'd like to incorporate a float switch to turn itself off when it fills up the upflow tank. The 50mm outlet at the top would be ideal for that.