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Originally Posted by Dave Jones  If you invest more energy in the oil by heating it, naturally the Drying time will be shortened. Obviously heating the oil to 50o would use more energy than the bubbling would use in a week, so the shorter drying time is no surprise. |
True but I use solar heat so my cost of heating is nil
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I have my setup currently doing 150L of cold oil, filtered and bone dry in 90 minutes. I'm using a 300W pump to " power" it so the energy consumption isn't huge and I'm pretty sure the overall energy consumption of this method would be less than heating the oil to 50 then bubbling it as heating is about the most energy intensive use of power there is. I might even do a totally " green" batch by powering the pump from a WVO fired generator or put a HE on the exhaust and turn a pump with the engine! That would be fast and efficient!  |
More complicated and capital intensive than a couple of old solar panels but sure would be fun getting it working
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| Each and every method has it's benefits and drawbacks and what suits one person may not suit another for a range of reasons, not the least being personal preference |
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True
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I think the bilge pump aerator could be very useful for drying on the road. This always seemed to be a " Holy Grail" type of thing to set up but I'm learning of different ways of filtering and drying on the road all the time.
I'll have to go on some road trips just to put a few of these ideas into practice!  |
Most on road filterers seem to trust their luck that they are using dry oil I'm a bit more of a pessimist. On the road you have lots of free heat, hot coolant. hot exhaust, tropical climate, shouldnt be too hard to heat a drum of oil during the day and dry it by spraying or bubbling overnight. Doing it without having to carry too much stuff, is the real Holy Grail
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| It's very interesting you can get oil dry enough to pass a HPT just by upflow settling. I have never been able to achieve this and was beginning to seriously doubt the reality of this happening. Certainly draining out the glop from the bottom of the tank would help but I still have trouble coming to grips with the fact dissolved water will settle out of the oil to this degree, heating, settling or otherwise.
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All I can suggest is that you do need heat to settle out all the water/suspended water. I say this because my first drum is not heated and I can drain out water and fatty oil from its bottom cone yet some water makes its way to the 3rd drum which is solar heated and when I drain that it I get no free water but oil which is 'wet'. Oil above the very bottom is almost dry and oil at the top where it flows into the final drum is dry.
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I haven't been bothering with upflowing of late.
I believe I have had some stirring due to the oil I have been adding in the upflow tank being warmer than the oil already in it and causing some thermal currents.
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Yep it can do that.
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I have a hard time seeing how the incoming oil would not be cooled sufficiently given it's small percentage to what is already in the tank to negate this effect but I have no other explanation.
As I pre-settle the raw oil before it goes to the upflow tank for several months and only draw the real good stuff off the top, I have just been adding it in the top of the upflow drum. |
I do that too, in 20litre plastic buckets yet it still contains water
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....Upflow is a continuous process where normal batch settling is just that, but in the end the main thing that matters is the time the oil is left alone. |
Yes, as long as it is settling all the time and not fooling around doing the convection current dance
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| That said, I have also come to believe that using tall, narrow, upflow tanks may also be better than using shorter tanks even if they are of much greater capacity. Rather than the IBC I'm using now, had I a suitable space, I would go to either 200L drums welded together, 2 or 3 of them or 400L water heaters run in parallel. I am thinking that the greater the distance between entry and exit on an upflow system, the better.
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Absolutely
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| Another Idea I would like to experiment with is a Pre-upflow using a tall upflow tank outdoors with the top 2/3rds painted black to warm from the sun and the bottom 1/3 have the insulation left on and shaded to keep it much cooler. My thought is that the oil would be warmed and somewhat circulated during the day in the sun allowing the debris and water to drop out during the night. When the oil was reheated subsequently over the next days, the thermals may take place mainly above the black painted area of the tank allowing the bottom part to act like a " sump" which catches all the undesirable material but which is not stirred up when the rest of the oil above it is warmed. If this tank was drained from the bottom regularly to remove the fallout, this sort of setup may prove more efficient that a plain setup as people mainly use now. |
You may have to drain off 20 litres from the bottom every evening for this to work. I found daily direct solar heating great for setting up convection currents.
Heating a drum then keeping it hot for as long as possible by means of insulation works better for me.
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| What is the total resident time in your system Johhno from the time you put the oil in your first tank till the time you decant it ? |
Goes through the funnel restrictor into the first drum (200 litres) at rate of roughly 2 litres per hour. Settles in 2 more drums before entering final drying drum. So 600/2 litres = 300hrs approx.