Alternative fuels > Waste Vegetable Oil

WVO Centrifuge Design - thoughs ?

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veggie:
Hi All,

I have a design question as I fabricate a WVO cleaning centrifuge.
My initial design shown below incorporates a single tank with the "Fuge" mounted above.
The 26 liter tank will incorporate a sight level tube and a 1000 watt heating element.
The idea of the small tank is that I can process a Gerry Can at a time for small batches.
There will be a small gear pump mounted on the side of the tank which continually circulates the WVO
 up to the centrifuge where it gets cleaned and falls back to the tank.
Theoretically, the longer the unit runs, the more passes the WVO gets through the centrifuge.

Most users of this type of Fuge have a two tank system. One above which uses gravity to the feed the Fuge, and one below to collect the cleaned oil. Then they pump the cleaned back oil up to the original tank for another pass. This ensures 100% contact time for all the oil.

My Question:
After a lot of Youtube digging, I have not seen anyone use a single tank system like mine which makes me wonder...
Will ALL of the oil pass through the centrifuge 100% or will there be pockets of un-cleaned oil that never make the loops?
For me, the single tank system is a real space saver and I don't mind leaving the system running longer in order to get multiple passes though the fuge. But will ALL the oil get processed given a long enough run time?

Anyone with experience with this?

Cheers,
Veggie

Tank = 7 Gal (26 liter)

mike90045:
If you can keep the oil thin and agitated, for long enough, it will be clean "enough"   Since it's operating in "bypass" all the time, all the clean oil you put back in, gets dirty.  Lather, Rinse, Repeat.

At some point, you have to put the clean oil somewhere.

veggie:

--- Quote from: mike90045 on June 18, 2018, 01:42:38 AM ---At some point, you have to put the clean oil somewhere.

--- End quote ---

Ha..Ha...Yes, after several processing loops with the centrifuge spinning at 5000 rpm, the oil should be very clean.
At that point a valve gets opened and the pump pushes the processed oil into a clean oil storage tank.
Then the green centrifuge tank gets filled again with dirty oil.
The fats and particles collect on the inner wall of the centrifuge drum for cleaning later.
That's the plan anyway.  ;)

The Drum was purchased from a centrifuge manufacturer and mounts on the shaft you see in the center of the housing base..
The housing was fabricated from pipe.

EdDee:
Hi V,

While it will certainly clean the vast bulk of the debris, I, personally, am going a slightly different route in the bits I am getting together... I will be using a "fill tank" to dribble the oil through the fuge first time round to collect most of the junk... thereafter it will be a single tank system which will recirculate until shut down...

Just my 0.00c worth.....

Cheers
Ed

BruceM:
Ed's first pass filtering should dramatically reduce total processing time and energy to the same quality output, for those that care about that aspect.  Nice bit of practical engineering, Ed.

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