SVO upflow design with photos!

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

Re: Critique my upflow design

Unless You are a sheet metal fabricator, the trouble and expense of a cone bottom is overkill for an upflow tank. Most of the water will be dissolved into and will drop down with the fats. Normally there is very little free water and unless the tank is also heated, it is hard if not impractical, to get the dissolved water to settle out in the period of time this oil would have in its turnover rate.
Draining slowly from a flat bottom tank will be perfectly adequate and it is possible a layer of fat on the bottom of the tank could also assist in filtering the incoming oil. As the good oil is at the top of the tank, what is on the bottom is pretty irrelevant. A cone bottom is nice to have if you can easily do one up yourself but at the end of the day, I don't believe it makes much difference.
Gravity feed is also nice but may well be impractical. The incoming oil would have to be above the height of 2 drums which may well make it above the ceiling height of an attached garage. If the height is not a problem, then the oil has to be pumped up there.
With the height of 2 44's, the oil could be fed at a rate of 3-4L min from the side of the drum so it is not lifting the settled layer to the top of the drum, without causing too much disturbance.
Having the oil that is being fed into the settling tank at the same temp as the tank contents or lower also eliminates the possibility of the new oil rising to the top such as in a thermo siphon action.

Dave I am not a sheetmetal fabricator and made my cones with an angle grinder,tinsnips, a hammer and piece of angle iron. I welded them on the drums with a gasless mig welder.
I dont think it is overkill at all, in fact I will eventually remove the 2 flat bottom drums in the system and weld cones on them as well. The water and sludge which gathers on the bottom of a flat based drum is impossible to drain out properly and eventually requires the drum to be emptied completely and cleaned out. If not removed it eventually causes contamination of the good oil.
As for gravity feed being above the roof, Here is a link to an early picture of my system while still under construction and as you can see the height to lift in the oil is not excessive.
http://www.biofuelsforum.com/svo_use..._system-2.html

[pangit Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close pangit]

Re: Critique my upflow design

baffleplate should be higher up.

those drill pumps are deadset the best ever BUT only those orange ones ( all others are too slow)
I have two of them to move bio and wvo around the place.
I know oily has pumped over 3000 litres of bio with his one and its still goin strong.
They might be too quick for your needs though. (remember centrifugal pumps slow on oil BUT positive displacement types don't) Mine does over 40 litres a minute on cold WVO.
i would go for a bilge pump or the caravan type 10-17 litres/min type with a good check valve.

I also think your top vent valve is un nessary.

Goodluck sean

PS: Go see David then you will know what your new setup will look like

Cheers Nick.

I might ditch the baffle plate as I'm not sure it's necessary and it may block up or something. Once I've welded the 2 barrels together there won't be a way to remove it.

As for the drill pump, won't it work with a battery drill on slow? Since it's a displacement pump shouldn't it work at any speed? And when you say the orange ones I'm assuming you mean like this one?

I've seen David's setup, but unfortunately I don't have space for 2 x 1000L IBCs! It was actually him that suggested using 2 drums welded together.

[pangit Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close pangit]

Re: Critique my upflow design

Holding tank is unnecessary. Oil will be clean and fat free from upflow output and given sufficient time and holding tank should be the filtering tank. In the unlikely event bag filtering ever becomes unnecessary, do it separately rather than corrupt the design of the settling system.

That's what I'm hoping. That's the whole point of using the upflow system - to reduce the amount of filtering necessary. So I may not use it, but I can put a small container in there with or without a filter if necessary, without affecting the design.

In diagram shown, dirt and bugs could (Would) be introduced to the oil AFTER the filtering stage which would contaminate it again. This is counter productive and why the filtering and drying should be in the one tank or at very least the filtering be done last.

I need the drying tank to be open while drying to aid evaporation, but if I have a lid that should protect the oil after drying is complete. Also the 1u cartridge filter will be filtering continuously while drying and when pumping out to the car.

I'll have a look at the configuration based on what you said, but I want to avoid too many stages due to space constraints. Maybe I can consolidate filtering/drying into 1 tank and use the last tank just for storage. Thanks for the help.

[pangit Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close pangit]

Re: Critique my upflow design

Looks good however it is missing 2 features which make my upflow system work well. 1. Cone bottom vessels with drain cocks at the bottom. (gets all the water right to the bottom and makes it a cinch to drain it out).
2. Ability to add oil very slowly by gravity, I'm talking 4hrs for 20 litres. (This means the settled oil is not stirred up as it moves through the 4 drums).

Cone bottom tanks would be nice, but I can't do the fabrication myself and don't think they are really necessary. What I've done before is push out the bottom of the drum slightly at the 3/4" fitting, which makes it the lowest point.

I would have liked to gravity feed the upflow tank, and I saw your design Johnnojack but decided to go with 2 welded drums to save space.

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

Re: Critique my upflow design

Hi pangit,

when I set up my system I did not want to use any electricity if I could avoid it.

The gravity feed works well. The flow is slow and does not stir up the settled gunk in the bottom of the three upflow drums.

The filter is in the last barrel/drum which takes quite some time to fill up with gunk even in winter.

This is about the third setup that I've tried and thus far seems to work well in a small space. http://www.biofuelsforum.com/svo_use...er_system.html,

God bless froggo.

[RODEONICK Too Busy To Bio. Find all posts View Profile Close RODEONICK]

Re: Critique my upflow design

As for the drill pump, won't it work with a battery drill on slow? Since it's a displacement pump shouldn't it work at any speed? And when you say the orange ones I'm assuming you mean like this one?

Battery drills are fine However to overcome the internal friction of the pump you need the turning at a decent speed. Once again they will be too fast even at a 10th of the speed i run them. you want something real slow 3 litres p/m max i recon.
Cheers Sean
P.s have to catch up soon, Elsa is due out of the panel beaters in a week so the fastest and prettyest merc will be right to roll again.

Nick

[pangit Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close pangit]

Re: Critique my upflow design

Cheers Nick, I actually ordered a bilge pump in the end so I'll see how that goes when it arrives.

It would be good to see your Merc in action. Thought about converting it to WVO yet?

[RODEONICK Too Busy To Bio. Find all posts View Profile Close RODEONICK]

Re: Critique my upflow design

Oh I see.

I think Dave Jones was joking ya know. But at least the 300D would still drive without the eletrics I would think. Anyways We should get back to seans upflow someday hey??
Cheers Nick.

[Tony From West Oz Vice Chairperson of WARFA Find all posts View Profile Close Tony From West Oz]

Re: Critique my upflow design

Nick,
Point taken, I have deleted all off-topic posts (including mine) so that we can get back to critique Pangit's upflow design.


Regards,
Tony

[pangit Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close pangit]

Re: Critique my upflow design

And I missed out on all the fun before the posts were deleted. But being a moderator I can read them anyway!

I didn't mind it going off topic really, as long as the posts remained friendly (which they were)!

Back on topic, I've tweaked the design yet again and am fairly happy with it now:

The major changes I've made are to incorporate the filtering/drying into one tank and have a separate sealed storage tank as per David's suggestion, and mount them on the floor instead of a raised stand as I don't really need bottom drains for them. I can just stick my drum pump in the bottom to remove any crap that may periodically build up (which should not be too often).

I've got all the bits I need, and will be assembling it over the next few weeks (time permitting). I'll post a photo of the finished setup when it's done.

[pangit Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close pangit]

Re: Critique my upflow design

Finally after over 4 months it's done! It's almost identical to the final design, as you can see from the photos:


WVO goes in the small drum on right, and is pumped into the bottom of the upflow drum with a bilge pump (which runs off the car battery underneath). The little 400gph pump couldn’t pump it any higher than the level you see in the photo, so I got a bigger 1250gph pump you can see in the foreground, which I will plumb in shortly. I want it to be as slow as possible but still do the job (so it doesn’t disturb the crap at the bottom), so if it is too powerful I can adjust it with a variable resistor.

You can’t see it but there’s a drain valve underneath the upflow drum attached to the ¾” outlet. You can just about see the vent tube coming out from behind the upflow drum back into the small drum in case it overflows.


The WVO comes out of the top of the upflow tank (or the one half way up if I’m low on WVO – thanks for the idea Tim-HJ61) into the 5μ bag filter. The OKI bucket and the MDF lid have large holes so the oil drops straight into the drying drum. That's an old QB70 pump, now in it's third life and still going strong! (originally it was on my biodiesel reactor then my fuelling trolley)


This shows the drying drum in action, with the WVO being circulated and sprayed through the hose ring. I am using an aquarium heater and foam insulation to help speed up the drying time. I ran my first batch in it yesterday for 4 hours and it was nearly dry, so I reckon 5-6 hours to pass the HPT in good conditions.


I keep the lid and bucket in place to minimise splattering. The lid is raised slightly to allow the moist air to escape out of the sides. The fan is just temporary as I am getting a smaller one.


The storage drum is filled via the bottom 5μ cartridge filter. The sight tube on the left also has a vent (which can be sealed to keep the moisture out). The top filter has a 1μ element and goes straight into the car via the trigger nozzle. If the storage drum is empty I can fill the car straight from the drying tank. One thing I still need to do is graduate the sight tube on the storage tank

[TroopyHZJ75 Member Find all posts View Profile Close TroopyHZJ75]

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

Great Job mate, will work a treat

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

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

Hi pangit,

looks the goods. Love the spray pattern in the dryer. Good luck,

God bless froggo.

[pangit Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close pangit]

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

The drying works well, although the spray pattern can be a pain - if 2 jets are hitting each other from opposite sides they can create splattering. I keep the lid on and restrict the flow slightly to reduce it.

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

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

The system looks very practical, thanks for the photos. Is your drying method working as you thought ie.approx 6 hrs?

Peter<><