Your thoughts on filtering and blends

[W123 x 2 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close W123 x 2]

Hi all,

As a single tank WVO user I was wondering about the following; rather than blending in kero (10-20% depending on season) after filtering and settling, what about blending before filtering?

So my thoughts are to coarse filter the WVO (jeans/cloth filter) into 205L drum, then add kero and stir. Then commence the fine filtering, settling and dewatering process.

It would seem that the kero would improve the viscosity and help the fine filtering (5 micron) process along. However does anyone see any problems with this that aren't obvious to me?

After processing the fuel would go into the storage tank with 'diesel power' additive, mainly for it's anti fungal properties.

Thanks in advance for any/all replies.

Michael

[Captain Echidna Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Captain Echidna]

Re: Your thoughts on filtering and blends

My questions would be..
does the Hydrogenated oild dissolve in kero? (and does it stay there?) if so you may be able to use them also, but you would have filtered them out in the first step. (I would think jeans are a probably smaller than 5 micron anyway).

And I would dewater before adding the kero, so I guess if I was to do it (and I am not going to blend, but anyway) I would filter perhaps using a flyscreen, then dewater, then t-shirt and 5 micron filter. (I use a coarse weave t-shirt, typically a nylon one as my first filter)

[W123 x 2 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close W123 x 2]

Re: Your thoughts on filtering and blends

Hi Chris,
Thanks for the reply.
I'm lucky my oil supply is very low in hydrogenated fats. Didn't realise that the jeans filter was (maybe) less than 5 microns; I use a 44 that used to have a lid and band, the band now holds the cloth and I lay flyscreen over the top which gets rid of the larger bits easily.

The filter I use in line is 5 micron absolute not nominal; it's a s/s mesh available from industrial filter suppliers - not cheap at around $100m2. The 5 micron nominal paper filters can let bits up to 60 micron through as it's and averaged result (read this somewhere on infopop). I modified a 2 inch irrigation line filter that had 100 micron mesh in it with the new mesh and silicone - messy but it works and gives enough surface area so it doesn't clog up to often. It gets cleaned every 400L or so which probably means the cloth filter is pretty good.

You're probably right though, I'll dewater after the first filter as I'm not sure what the kero will do to the process. Better safe than sorry.

Cheers, Michael