Hi all, hoping someone else in Brisbane area can advise me.

My canola oil is collected into a 60 l steel drum after (upflow) settling and I need to get it OUT of that into the next stage of processing. I thought about just putting a garden tap on the side of it, but I doubt there'd be much flow through the automotive fuel filter just from gravity.

Now I've looked at "water feature" pumps (Bunnings has all kinds of them cheap) and "bilge pumps" (from BCF) and (petrol) fuel pumps from Supercheap Auto etc (probable cooling problem) and salvaged washing machine pumps (most tempting because free) and even genuine drum pumps (expensive) but not convinced any of them will happily and reliably force SVO through a 20 micron or better filter with a reasonable flowrate and without the seals degrading from the WVO.

If you've already solved this one, please tell me exactly what pump to get from where and how much I should expect to pay. Obviously it has to either 1) fit through a 2" hole or 2) "suck" as happily as it pushes or 3) put up with the constant pressure of a head of oil (assuming it's connected to a tap in the side of the drum).

Regards Felix

The cheap 3/4 HP centrifugal water pumps (~$70) you get on Ebay will happily pump filtered oil through a 5 micron filter.

You may find washing machine pumps work equally well, and if you can salvage them for free you may as well give it a go.

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Sean

Hi, thanks for your reply. There seems to be little traffic on these Brisbane pages. I know there are lots of people doing this in the area but maybe they' don't come this way much. I'm going to try my query on http://www.biofuelsforum.com/svo_users/ just to see if anyone else has some recommendations. Regards Felix.