"At Last...Washing Biodiesel And Quality Testing Without Headaches and Hassles"

Washing biodiesel is Here.

The No Fluff, No BS Guide to Washing and Quality Testing Biodiesel.

Now You Can Have Quality Biodiesel Even Better Than Some Commercial Dealers!

My methods are So Simple, Anyone Can Do It and Start Saving Money Today.

Dry Washing Biodiesel: An Introduction:

After dry washing your biodiesel, it will usually have a slightly hazy or cloudy appearance to it, this is because there are micro droplets of water still in suspension in your just dry washed fuel, biodiesel has an ability to keep this water in suspension and up to 1500 parts per million is allowable by international quality specifications, but even at these levels your dry washed biodiesel should look clear.

There are several ways to remove the excess water which causes this cloudiness but the main objective of them all is to expose the biodiesel to as much air as possible to allow evaporation of the water, this can be acheived by just leaving the dry washed biodiesel in a container with it's top open to air exposure, but depending on the temperature of the air and how much it is circulating over the container it can take from days to weeks to evaporate the water off and for the dry washed biodiesel to lose it's haze, dry washed biodiesel dries more quickly or more slowly depending on how well dry washed it is(ie less soap = quicker drying).

There are several ways to speed up this dry washing process:

1.Increase the amount of air contact with the biodiesel...use a larger open topped container.
2.Increase the movement of air around the container...use a fan to move the air.
3.Increase the temp of the air...warm air can hold more water vapour than cold air.
4.Bubbling air through the biodiesel.

So far these options have concentrated on methods of getting air to the biodiesel, all of which are also really easy to implement, however there is another way but it does involve a little more work to set up, it is the opposite of getting air to your biodiesel and that is to get the biodiesel to the air, ie spraying it through the air in a fan pattern to achieve maximum air contact and evaporation, and experiments so far have shown that this seems to be one of the quickest methods of drying washed biodiesel, and as long as the relative humidity is not too high, just spraying through the air should dry your biodiesel in approximately an hour, However if the relative humidity is too high it will help to warm the biodiesel.

SO THIS IS WHAT YOU NEED TO DO:

First it's best to have some way to warm your biodiesel up, possibly by using your biodiesel processors heater, or by adding a heating element to your washing tank.

Guzzler's combined washing and drying tank.

Secondly you need some way of pumping/circulating your biodiesel to get the biodiesel moving through the air, the outlet pipe from your pump needs to be fitted with a spay type nozzle or just crimped flat to give as much of a fanned out spray pattern to the biodiesel as possible and therefore increasing the surface area of biodiesel in contact with the air.

Dry wash biodiesel tank showing pump spray pipe outlet crimped flat with clamps.

Once you have the means to achieve these two things you are ready to dry your biodiesel quickly, Start by warming your biodiesel to 50C(122F) then turn on your pump to get the biodiesel circulating and direct the spray of the pump outlet onto the inside wall of the tank, the more surface/air contact you can create then the better the evaporation of the water will be and the quicker the biodiesel will be dried.

Pump spray pipe showing fan spray pattern onto inside of drying tank.

SOME NOTES:

Higher temperatures will speed things up, although there is no need to go much higher than the boiling point of water, heating the pre dry washed biodiesel to 110C(230F) and then turning off the heat and circulating/spraying for an hour should clear all but the wettest pre dry washed biodiesel, BUT as always remember that higher temperatures require extra care!

If you cannot work out a means of heating your pre dry washed biodiesel then good results have been achieved by using a hot air fan blowing across the spraying biodiesel.

Good results have also been achieved using an upturned dustbin lid in the top of the tank with some small holes drilled into it which will allow the biodiesel to run across it's large surface area then down through the holes and back into the tank, again a hot air fan blowing across the dustbin lid could be used instead of heating the dry washed biodiesel.

See the difference? Just washed on the left and spray dry washed biodiesel on the right.

Courtesy of UtahBiodieselSupply.com

See Also:

Want a Complete biodiesel System?

Want to Build Your Own Processor?

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