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Home Page
Theory
of the Project
Preparation
of the Fuel
Biodiesel
Fuel Tank
Fuel Flow
First Road Trip
Modification
of the Design
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Theory
The following steps must be taken to prepare the WVO before it can be used.
1. Collection
2. Storage and settling
3. Filtering
4. Storage again
5. Onboard Fuel tank and Fuel line filtering (See Fuel Flow )
Collection
Most restaurants have a 55-gallon or bigger drum in the rear where they put their oil. It's easy to find oil, but it's a little harder to find good oil. Don't even bother with fast food joints since their oil is full of crap. Instead, go find a yuppie restaurant, or an Asian restaurant. Yuppie restaurants usually use good oil (canola) and replace it often. Asian restaurants are good because their oil doesn't usually have any beef fat in it. This is a pattern I have noticed; anyplace that cooks lots of beef usually has very poor oil due to all of the lard solidifing at room temperature. Chicken and fries don't contribute to this; hence aim for these restaurants. The best place I have found for oil is "California Tortilla Kitchen" because they use it to cook nacho chips; hence no animal fats.
Once you have located you source(s) for oil, go prepared.
Two rules:
1. Ask permission. Some people don't care but some do, and you don't want to get caught stealing. It's OK and recommended to check the quality of the oil first before asking. This saves time and hassle, and nobody should get offended if you just look at their oil without permission.
2. This is a biggie, DON'T MAKE A MESS! You will not be allowed to come back if you dump hazardous waste (the oil) on the ground. This is the quickest way to ruin it for everybody. Don't ever walk away from an operating pump: hoses slip out, containers fill up quicker than expected, etc.
Take with you:
12 volt pump from Harbor Freight
Containers (obviously)
Hose as necessary
Tupperware storage container to put oily hoses and pump into when finished.
Roll of paper towels - trust me
The rest is common sense. Pump off the top and avoid the bottom 8 inches. Don't worry about floating specks getting sucked up - the filters will handle these without problem later. Also look into the dumpster, they may be some of those 5 gallon containers that the new oil came in available for you to use.
Settling, Filtering, and Storage
Once the oil is brought back to the house, it is poured into the blue 55 gallon drum and allowed to sit for 2-4 weeks. It is them pumped into the black elevated container in preperation for filtering. The oil then flows under gravity through the white pipe to a whole house water filter. After passing through the filter it goes into the two 55 gallon green drums for storage until it needs to be used.
Below is the old way I used to filter, it is kept on here just to give some ideas.
Storage and Settling
Now that I am renting a house I have much more space to play with this stuff. I am trying to minimize the time and effort required to filter the oil. So the first thing I did was to buy bigger trash containers from the hardware store (all made in America by Rubbermaid). I bought two 38 gallon trashcans and a 50 gallon storage container to be used for the settling. Remember it is best to let the oil settle for 2 weeks - this does most of the work. I was thinking of getting some 55 gallon containers for this but it is cheaper and more practical just to use some locally bought trash cans, plus they are easy to get rid of if I need to.
Filtering
This is a very important part of the process. Once the oil has settled, I pump off the top into a second container (trash can). I do this until there is only about 8 inches left in the bottom of the original container. I leave this bottom portion alone to avoid pumping out the sediment. I then take the second container to the inside of my garage where there is no airborne debris such as leaves etc. I have setup my sock filters over top of a third container (yes I know, I have lots of containers) as shown in the picture.
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What you see in the picture is a five-micron sock filter tucked inside of a 1-micron filter. The five-micron gets the big chunks and the 1-micron cleans up the rest. Hence I get an easy to setup two-stage filtration. I setup two pairs of filters side by side so as to speed up the process. The next portion is a little time consuming. Using the pump, I pump the oil into the sock filters until it fills up. Then I go do something else for 10 minutes. Again, I pump the oil into the sock filter until fills up, wait 10 minutes; repeat. The picture below shows the speed at which the oil comes.
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At some point you will run out of oil or the trash can will fill up. I store the clean oil in 5-gallon restaurant vegetable oil containers, trash cans, and soon to be in a 55-gallon drum. It took me about 2 hours to filter the amount of oil shown in the picture below. This is about 35 gallons, the amount needed to go to Georgia and back (see
First Road Trip ).
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You have no idea how much fuel you have been using until you see in front of you and have to carry it. 35 gallons doesn't sound like much, but it is.
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