Pool clarifier before filtering

[buffdownunder]

Has anybody ever tried pool clarifier before filtering WVO?

It sounds stupid but I had an issue with a pool not being clear and the guy in the pool shop gave me a so called pool clarifier. 100 ml of this "organic polymer" for every 10.000 litre and it made all the small particles cluster together so that the sand filter got them out. The effect was amazing. Cristal clear water after ONE filter cycle with just a simple sand filter.

Organic Polymer doesn't sound so far away and 100 ml on 10.000 litre is hardly traceable.

This way I could take an old sandfilter and filter WVO to cristal clear quality or the cheapest filter bag available and my desire for a centrifuge would dissapear..

Before I try this I thought I better ask if somebody has done this before

[Guy_Incognito]

A couple of things :

1. It's water soluble obviously as you chuck it in the pool, but I don't know if it'll mix with oil.
2. If it *is* soluble, you'd probably have trouble with the viscosity of the stuff you're trying to filter, restricting it's ability of the floc to clump particles together.

Has anyone thought of an air-bubbler arrangement for filtering out chunkier particles? Without going too much into the finer details, surface tension on the surface of tiny bubbles should make particles cling to them (similar to pepper on water) and float up where they can be skimmed off. Something like a aquarium pump and a few stones in a container, run for 10 minutes, might do something.
It might do nothing too, just trying to apply a design I've seen in various industrial plants for particle separation 

[buffdownunder]

The air bubble arrangement sounds very promising and you could blow in hot air to also get any water in the oil out.

I think that I will try and see what happens if I take 20 litres of WVO, add the clarifier and use a hot air gun to blow hot air (~110 degrees celcius) through a pipe to the bottom of the drum so that it gets the oil on temperature (reduces viscosity), mixes the clarifier thoroughly and gets the particles to float on the surface. That is a pretty easy test.

Edward

[danalinscott]

Pool Claifiier.

Been tried by folks on the Infopop svo forum without much success.

Bubble washing has a tendency to create hard to separate water/Vo emulsions.
Mist washing is much more effective wihtout as much chance of creating an emulsion.

More info on mistwashing is at : http://www.websitetoolbox.com/tool/post/voconversionbasics/vpost?id=1610968

Bubbling hot air through wvo to dry it works..but it also significantly acellerates polymerization to the point it is hardly ever used as a dewatering method.