Filtering Setup
I collect waste vegetable oil to filter and dewater for use in a diesel engine. I have a garage where I do this but I used to do this in a small shed. The garage is not connected to any electricity or water supply. Vegetable oil by it's very nature tends to be greasy and inevitably gets to places you don't want it to therefore sometimes you get a mess. The mess needs clearing up which involves cleaning with water so in my situation you have to adapt. I collect it off the roof into a water butt installed high up inside the garage. This butt feeds an indirect domestic immersion tank, standard domestic size, which is heated by the cooling system of a 1986 Ford 1800 diesel engine (installed after it had done 90000 miles). The engine supplies heating to the garage and also 230vac via a 3Kw inverter and runs on vegetable oil. It also supplies heat for my filtering setup pictured below.
The process starts from the right. The blue tank is a settling tank where the oil goes after collection. I then pump from the top of the tank about 20 litres into the top white tank which has a heat exchanger fed by hot (85oC) coolant water from engine. The lid is then placed on and clamped shut. When the oil is fairly hot, about 65oC,the red valve at the base is turned on. The hot oil then drops into a piece of cut off drain pipe with the leg of a pair of jeans sown up at the bottom that acts as a filter up to about 10 microns. As the oil level drops in the drain pipe it gets below the level of the bottom of the feed pipe from the upper tank. This allows air into the upper tank and so the drain pipe is kept topped up until the top tank is empty. The lower tank also has a heat exchanger fitted to keep the oil hot. To the left of the upper tank is a gold coloured fish tank pump which is connected to a small piece of 10mm pipe with 0.5mm holes drilled in it. When the pump is turned on it forces air bubbles up through the oil. In doing this the air bubbles rise through the hot oil "picking up" any water that's suspended in the oil taking it to the surface where it bursts allowing the water to evaporate. I leave this running for about 6 hours after which I take a sample of oil and heat it to 110oC.This shows whether there is any water left in the oil commonly called a pan test. As you know when you heat oil above 100oC it starts to pop and fizz if there's any water in it. If no water is present I then use the blue pump on the floor to pump the oil through a standard spin on vehicle fuel filter in to a drum so I can move it to take away. This is a semi automatic process which I can leave to get on with itself after the oil has initially got up to a temperature of about 65oC.The reason for such a lot of heating is my oil is partially hydrogenated, that is, it's semi solid at about 8 to 10oC therefore winter presents problems with flow. A standard central heating radiator mounted behind everything helps keep the air warm around the tanks and me in winter.
A few more photos below.
Construction time.....
