SVO upflow design with photos!

[pangit Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close pangit]

Re: My upflow design - [updated 15 Dec with photos!]

Yes, I left the first batch running for 6 hours and it was 100% dry afterwards, so I might be able to reduce it down to 5. At 4 hours it was nearly dry so I left it going for another 2.

Unfortunately the new bilge pump died on me after only pumping a few litres. It was a cheapie Ebay one and although it comes with a 2 year warranty it wasn't designed for pumping oil so I don't think I'll be claiming!

It looks like I'll be making a trip down to Whitworths to get a decent Rule one.

[Nuddy Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Nuddy]

Re: My upflow design - [updated 15 Dec with photos!]

I also noticed in the whitworths catalog an aerator Pump which appears to be a bilge with a riser that normally sprays the water back into live bait tanks to keep the water oxygenated. One of these could provide a very simple way of spraying the oil to help with drying as well.

Must check out the catalog. I have one at home.
Perhaps this is the key to easy drying setup.
I think the spray method is probably better than the air bubble method for drying.
I have been told that most IP damage is caused by water in the diesel.
Bio users and even dino users may benefit by drying their fuel using one of the methods that WVO users employ.
Meanwhile drying has jumped to the top of my priority list. A trip to whitworths may be in order. I pass by every Monday.

[pangit Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close pangit]

Re: My upflow design - [updated 15 Dec with photos!]

Cheers David, some good ideas I hadn't thought of. Yes, it passed the HPT with no bubbles at all. Although my second batch that I did today still had some tiny bubbles after 5-6 hours. It was pretty good though. I'm sure I could improve my drying system but it works well enough for now.

I bought a Rule 1100GPH pump and it works brilliantly. Too well in fact, I'll have to slow it down a bit.

Note: don't get cheap Ebay bilge pumps (Seaworld brand) they are rubbish compared to decent Rule ones and not much cheaper once you've paid postage etc.

Recirculating definitely works a whole load better than bubbling Paul, as bubble drying used to take me several days and now it's a matter of hours. Bubbling is OK for biodiesel but WVO is too thick to dry effectively with it.

[Johnnojack Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Johnnojack]

Re: My upflow design - [updated 15 Dec with photos!]

......
Recirculating definitely works a whole load better than bubbling Paul, as bubble drying used to take me several days and now it's a matter of hours. Bubbling is OK for biodiesel but WVO is too thick to dry effectively with it.

Sean you must be talking about drying cold oil? I have found bubbling very effective and it only takes hours not days. However my oil is warm when bubble drying (50-55degC) Do you dry cold/room temperature oil with the pump and fan method?
FWIW I havent needed to dry any oil for a while as at the end of the upsettling process it is HPT bubble free. This may be due to my latest practice of opening the valve at the bottom of the 2nd to last drum every 2 days and draining out about 2 cups of oil which I return to the first drum. Dregs from the bottom of the first drum go outside into the dregs/water/fat bucket.

[Johnnojack Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Johnnojack]

Re: My upflow design - [updated 15 Dec with photos!]

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

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

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

.
True

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

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.

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.

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.

Yep it can do that.

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

....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

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.

Absolutely

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.

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.

[craigcurtin Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close craigcurtin]

Re: My upflow design - [updated 15 Dec with photos!]

DJ,

FWIW - i have a solarheart shop up the road from me - they let me know that they do a lot of swap outs of the "old style" solar water heaters with the tank on the roof - nearly always the tank on the roof rusts out and the panels are still in great condition. Go down to your local solarheart place and offer them a case of beer for panels in really good condition and see how you go. Free heat - and just need a small pump to push the oil through.

Craig

[skooled Biofuels Forum Newbie Find all posts View Profile Close skooled]

Re: My upflow design - [updated 15 Dec with photos!]

I was chatting to a guy at tafe who installs solar systems, and he begs to differ. he said that the panels tend to go before the tanks, and even if they are good, the connections tend to break when being disconnected.

[craigcurtin Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close craigcurtin]

Re: SVO upflow design with photos!

Only telling you what my guys up the road told me. So far i have seen about 10-12 panels up there that are all in pretty good condition (i have grabbed 8 of them in the last 3 months) - yet i have never seen a good tank.

The tanks join to the copper tubing with compression fittings so i do not know what there is to actually break when disconnecting

Craig

[skooled Biofuels Forum Newbie Find all posts View Profile Close skooled]

Re: SVO upflow design with photos!

he told me that they were a barrel union, but not having been up and seen one for my self......

[t-roy Biofuels Forum Newbie Find all posts View Profile Close t-roy]

Re: SVO upflow design with photos!

G'day Sean, I know its an old post, but wondering if the photo's of your upflow set up are still around, or maybe photo's of the new and improved version? Troy

[pangit Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close pangit]

Re: SVO upflow design with photos!

Photos are still there on page 3. And I've put the diagram back on the first post.

[Tim-HJ61 Donating Member Find all posts View Profile Close Tim-HJ61]

Re: SVO upflow design with photos!

Thanks to Panjit for letting me add onto his posting. I'm not saying my system is better than his, it's just different and users can pick up ideas from both of our systems. Photos are set as attachments and you might find this long text easier to follow if you view the attachments first.

My system is primarily only a settling system. I have incorporated 5 micron filters just to see if it would make any difference, which I don't think they have but they are there to use when I fell like it.

I pick up oil from the fish and chip shop in open topped 20 litre drums. They are sealed in the shop. I do pick up a lot of their waste lumpy bits which doesn't impress me but I don't see the point in complaining more than pointing out that I much prefer it when they use their filter pump to fill my drums as it leaves the chips and sardine remnants in their waste, not for me to pay for! The Matriach is not someone to mess with!!

First I pour the oil through a course strainer made out of Termimesh, which is stainless steel mesh designed to keep termites out of houses. It is formed into a frame of an old wire basket and works very effectively. The scraps dry out nicely and get either buried in the garden or put out with house waste. If compressed they would burn nicely in a log fire no doubt.

This wire basket sits over the top of a 200 litre open topped blue plastic barrel. The wire basket is held up by a small frame that stops it falling into the barrel.

The oil flows through the termimesh and then into two Bunnings bags stretched across the top of the Blue drum. These Bunnings bags are supported by a stainless steel rack to ensure the full bags do not tear away from their straps.

When fat builds up in these bags, it is scraped off with a kitchen scoop and disposed of into a hole in the garden for the worms to eat over time. Each month or so the Bunnings bags are removed and cleaned in glycerol and replaced. Sometimes they sneak into the family washing machine for a 50°C wash. Given they cost $1 I'm not sure of the carbon footprint and economic analysis of this practice :-)

The suction pickup of the pump is set about 200mm from the base of the Blue Drum and has a non return valve on the end of it. If necessary, I can clean out this Blue drum using a hand turned drum pump that sucks up most things and allows reprocessing of any collected large bits and fats that have slipped past the Bunnings bags.

The settling process consists of two 200 litre steel drums laid over on their side. The oil is pumped into the bottom of Drum 1 and as the drum fills, it comes out the large top hole and through a length of thin wall black poly into the bottom bung of Drum 2. Only the cleanest oil comes out the top as the heavier gunk has settled. This gunk can be removed via a bung I have welded into the side (now it is tipped over it has become the base) of the steel drums. This drains back into the Bunnings bags for reprocessing.

Draining crud is made easier by allowing air back into the tops of the drums via a non return valve on each drum. In case these non return valves leak under pump pressure, they are connected to a hose that feeds back into the Bunnings bags. Allowing the air to get back into the drums really speeds up the drain flow. I will often drain 10 litres of oil out of drum 1 and 5 out of drum 2 to ensure dirty oil is not mixed into the well settled oil when the pump is turned on.

Once Drum 2 is full, the very clean oil flows out of the top bung and into the 1000 litre IBC that sits underneath the two 200 litre steel drums. The white PVC pipe goes right to the bottom of the IBC to try to stir up the oil in the IBC as little as possible. Any air that has been drawn into the steel drums is expelled via a small hole drilled in the PVC pipe just inside the top of the IBC and above the general oil level. This has dramatically reduced the bubbles coming out the bottom of this PVC pipe which tended to stir up the oil in the IBC. Thanks to Tony of West Oz for this suggestion.

To fuel my Landcruiser, I wanted to draw only from the top of the oil in the IBC to obtain the cleanest Golden Fuel. I have achieved this by building a floating pickup made of a non return valve cable tied to a glass jar. There is 2 metres of lightweight black poly hose in the IBC that is connected to a PVC spear that goes to the bottom of the IBC. This way all the connections inside the IBC are under oil, reducing the chance of sucking air into the suction line. The glass jar is around 400mls in capacity and holds the pipe and pickup just nicely. This device has a length of string attached so I can fish it out of the small hole in the top of the IBC if necessary.

I have one manifold for supply to the gear pump and one manifold on discharge. Manifolds are made of 20mm PVC reticulation pipe. Several supply and discharge options are available. I can suck from the Blue open top drum, or the clean oil from the IBC by changing valves around. I can pump out to the steel drums, to the filters or to two options for filling vehicles. One of these options has a bowser outlet that fits into the vehicle filler neck, and it has been plumbed with PVC pipe to the rear of the garage some 10 metres from the storage tanks so I can fill my car with ease and no unravelling of hoses. I simply lift the bowser handset and put it into the filler neck, then go turn on the pump and gaze with pride how easy it all is - now! Getting to this point has taken four years of development and refinement.

I have incorporated a modified black poly non return valve and it is now a pressure release valve. I unscrewed the valve and replaced the light weight spring with a heavier one cut to the right size. This opens at about 40 psi which means I can let the bowser handset go and calmly move to switch off the pump when the tank is full. The excess oil bleeds through the pressure relief valve and back into the suction of the pump. Cross fingers no more overfills or burst hoses.

Other points:
All hoses, valves and pipes are 20mm.
A fuel meter is fitted but not yet calibrated to be accurate.
The pump is a gear pump driven by a 3/4 HP electric motor. Discharge is not exceptional - about 15 litres a minute. It's old and a bit noisy and may be running too fast for it be to be happy, but it's not wearing out with WVO!
The pump has a pressure gauge.

What would I change? I'd like to add a 80 psi electric pressure switch so I could turn off the mechanical pressure relief valve with it's valve in order to push higher pressure through the filters if necessary. It'd be handy to know that whatever happened, the electric motor would cut out if the pressures got too high.

Does it work?
Yep. Oil is excellent clarity. Apart from the Blue drum, contact with moisture laden air is minimised.

My system has no procedure for drying the oil. I have recently pulled an injector after 50,000km since the injectors were replaced - (Engine has done 200k, injectors replaced at 150k, started using WVO at 130k). The injector sprayed as per normal and it's cracking pressure was the standard 3000 psi - 200 bar. An endoscope check inside the combustion chamber revealed minimal carbon and very clean cylinder bores. This is in a direct injection engine. Whatever I have been doing with the oil and my driving/purging techniques has been working for me - I've no need to change anything.

See the attached images.

Hope this is useful folks.

Tim

[Tim-HJ61 Donating Member Find all posts View Profile Close Tim-HJ61]

Re: SVO upflow design with photos!

One more attachment.

[Tim-HJ61 Donating Member Find all posts View Profile Close Tim-HJ61]

Re: SVO upflow design with photos!

My system has no procedure for drying the oil. I have recently pulled an injector after 50,000km since the injectors were replaced - (Engine has done 200k, injectors replaced at 150k, started using WVO at 130k). The injector sprayed as per normal and it's cracking pressure was the standard 3000 psi - 200 bar. An endoscope check inside the combustion chamber revealed minimal carbon and very clean cylinder bores. This is in a direct injection engine. Whatever I have been doing with the oil and my driving/purging techniques has been working for me - I've no need to change anything.

It's in the last paragraph Dave.

[t-roy Biofuels Forum Newbie Find all posts View Profile Close t-roy]

Re: SVO upflow design with photos!

Some great set ups guys. I'm new to the game so they are a bit mind boggling at the moment but already got some tips on what to look for. Being in QLD the "moisture laden air" may be something I have to take into more consideration. Look forward to seeing and reading about other set ups and and adding my own when up and running.
Thanks
Troy

$500 '84 hilux 2.4l
30 plate H.E.
Dual tank
800km on wvo (and climbing!)