Hey Glort...
Sorry it took so long to reply...been busy playing....
The filter failure was on the engine side, its a last ditch guard for particle contamination that could make its way through the fuel processing bits... I think there were actually a combination of errors, and the last trap failed as well...no matter, all fun!
I have a sneaking suspicion that some of the WMO that I had included in the process line was actually WICOFBSG (Waste Industrial Coolant Oil From a Bloody Surface Grinder) - Laden with what appears to be Aluminium oxide and Silicon Carbide grinding wheel residue.... then again, maybe some lazy SOB just took the shop floor sweepings and dropped them into the waste oil collection drum... Who knows! (School fees - A more thorough method of processing will be required!!)
I have almost completed my small scale oil stilling plant, man oh man, it is made up of some really "diverse" bits of plumbing and junk - not a pretty toy, but quite effective to say the least! There is one last bit of plumbing to install, and that is to drain the main hot tank to flush out the solids during operation.... I have worked out a way to do it, now just to implement and install it...
Running the creature seems, at this stage, pretty unspectacular, which is a good thing, I DONT like surprises when handling 3 to 500C oil... The duller life is, the better!
I have found that the only "interesting times" are during initial startup, thick, fresh, mildly water contaminated oil - As the first bit of product warms up, water starts to condense on the inside of the cold chamber and pools in small quantities causing small pockets of flash steam - the chip fryer effect - and that causes a bit of the "pucker factor" to develop - once it has come up to temp though, the bulk of the water is dropped in the line and can be drained during operation - I also suspect, that with the piping layout as I am scheming (and muddling) it through, is that once the feed line is near fully filled with water, due to the higher SG of water vs Oil, the feed bowl will shut off and prevent further ingress of mixed goop to the reactor chamber....
In a nutshell, the basic description of the machine is as follows:
1 - Feedstock Inlet control (via a float level to maintain a constant head of goop to supply the heated chamber) - This has a valve to cut off supply, a drain valve to drain any sedimentary moisture, an overflow vent for if the level of the float becomes erratic, a breather vent to atmosphere on the top of the level control chamber to prevent any siphoning effect and a "mid level" outfeed that is above the bottom of the float chamber to avoid settled water..
2 - Long U-Shaped feed pipe that drops out of the feed bowl and slopes upward towards the boiler, the final climb to the boiler is a steep one, this allows for settling water, as the feedstock warms up, to drop away from the boiler inlet. This also has a drain cock on its lowest point, this allows for periodic checking and draining of any water during operation. One "feature" of this pipe is that it has 3 couplings on it, this allows for the seemingly "random" slopes to be set, as well as easier, more compact, storage when stripped down.
3 - The boiler+burner/reactor/pucker factor creator - this is a simple babbington type burner, operating between 1 and 6 Bar, fueled by raw waste goop - Heats a heavy wall pipe type chamber, bottom sealed with removable flange type top - The inlet to the boiler is at the bottom on the side, a 3/4" pipe, near horizontal. The exit is also 3/4", at the top, sloping slightly upward to allow boiled splash to run back into the chamber. This is elbowed vertically, reduced to 1/2" and rises about 200?mm to exit, via an elbow to the condenser. The overall height of the boiler is about 300mm and around 3"diameter. Around this gubbins is a light walled pipe to act as a flame guide and the burner fired into a small flame space below it. The clearance for the flame guide is about 10mm all the way round the boiler, the cavity below it is about 40mm..
4 - Condenser - this is a straight run of copper pipe, 1/2" dia about 4' to 5' long - it is jacketed by a 1"galv pipe filled with water - the jacket has a open reservoir tank at top and a cold water feed at the bottom, water thermo syphons in this little little loop, able to be topped up as needed... Exit temp of the condensate are around 5 degrees warmer than the coolant - so plenty of cooling capacity for what energy I am putting in to it.....
Operation - The feedstock and the fuel for the burner are from the same supply - They can be separated, easily and quickly, this is done by quick coupler.
Once oil is flowing to the works, open the air to the burner and light it up - A stable flame is attained within a minute or two, once the burner warms up.
Listen for flash steam from moisture in the boiler, if there are "chips starting to fry" - wear your brown pants, shut off the heat, wait for the popping to stop, warm it up slowly to cook of the moisture....
Once it is up to temperature, the distilled product starts flowing and it is pretty much a spectator sport thereafter. If you reach saturation point for the boiler contents and output product flow diminishes, either, (a) Step up the heat a bit to fracture the remaining product, or (b) dump the saturated product to waste for flame disposal or painting fence posts or tarring your road. Either way, but the (b) option particularly, is of high pucker factor - this is because of the possibility of introducing high moisture content oil into a reactor chamber of around 300C - BAD THINGS WILL HAPPEN!!
This brings me to the next little bit of plumbing I am wanting to implement - the hot residue drain, dumping directly from the chamber to a waste reciever..... (Pucker factor is a way of life I reckon).... My idea: a co-axial drain pipe down the center of the last section of pipe that feeds the boiler....I wonder if it will work....?
Oh, you might ask...Why go to all this puckering trouble....Simple - I am LAZY! If I can distill fuel easily and effectively, no filtering or other treatment is needed, except as a cautionary procedure, a' la' the standard inline filters as are normally found...
Yes, Glort, a 'fuge would be a lovely to to have - it is on my wish-I-had-time-and-materials-to-build-it-list, I am almost there in that respect - only a few more things to get........but - distilling is so much fun, I just cant help myself!!
On another note, I picked up a lovely little v-twin compressor last Sunday, with, happily, 2x unloader poppets on the heads and an unloader regulator on the tank... This is an IDEAL candidate to add to TM1 (there is a bit of space left on his chassis)....
Ah, another thing - the replacement gaskets, cylinder, rings and piston have arrived!!
Ok, enough of my BS rambling....
Keep it Cooking!!
Cheers
Ed
PS - The usual disclaimer - don't try this at home kids!! Hot oil and the like kinda acts like a great solvent for dissolving skin, paint and life!!