How to Filter WVO For use ? - Page 9 - PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum

Addicted · #**121** 07-19-2007, 02:15 PM

I figure I would post.

I am at work so I can not put the link (I will try and remember to do it later) of a youtube video of how I filter at home. (Type in WVO MERCEDES...and you will get it...it is the 3rd one I think that pops up) The system is much like Rleo's PVC drawing but the filter housing is Aluminum. I use a 7" diameter (don't remember how long) by 15" sock that goes through 10 Micron. I have probably filtered about 500 gallons through the soc and have had no problems. I do not settle the oil. I only use a 75 micron screen when I suck off the top of the dumpster. I use in the video my electric pump but now use my hand crank pump due to I am worried the high pressure I created pumping so quickly with the electric pump was possibly cuasing the Micron rating of the soc to increase. Though the filter housing supports it all the way down excpet for the very bottom so it was probably fine.

I collect my oil from a Mexican restraunt. Who dumps about 10-15 gallons a month but is is the cleanest oil I have ever seen. And then from a fish fry place that gets rid of about 40 gallons a month. That is enough to keep me driving.

I was using it in my truck and had no problems. I'm now have gone through about 25 gallons in my MB with a 2 mic filter on the 500FG I have and I have not noticed any clogage what so ever. I look at my soc filter and it is faily clean considering all of the oil that has gone through there.

I do not do anything for water. I tested them when I first got the oil there and it was good to go. Plus I figure my water seperator on the car will pick any of that up small amount that may be their.

Moral of the story...Get clean oil to begin with, but then again you have to take what you can get.

dwoloz · #**122** 07-19-2007, 02:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Addicted

I do not do anything for water. I tested them when I first got the oil there and it was good to go. Plus I figure my water seperator on the car will pick any of that up small amount that may be their.

I've seen this notion in this thread a couple times AND IT IS FALSE

Water separators intended for diesel do not separate out water in vegetable oil (specifically suspended water)
I know this as fact because I own a Perma-Cool water separator filter and ran a batch through and even after the filter, water was present as shown in the hot pan test. There was no visible water but it was suspended within the oil.

Only sure way to dewater is to heat and settle

firemediceric · #**123** 07-19-2007, 02:43 PM

I actually ADD water to my WVO in a mistwash fashion. This is to help junk settle out as well as to neutralize any acids or caustic grill cleaners that may be in the WVO.

After I allow a few days for the water to settle to the bottom of the WVO, I drain the water and junk off. I then heat the oil and let it settle for weeks. Leaving the bottom 8" behind, I pump the oil cold through my filters into a second drum where it gets heated again and once again allowed to settle for weeks.

I do have water seperating filters on the filter station as well as both vehicles, but I think I have them there more for peace of mind or a safety net.

NC Benz · #**124** 07-19-2007, 03:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by firemediceric

I actually ADD water to my WVO in a mistwash fashion. This is to help junk settle out as well as to neutralize any acids or caustic grill cleaners that may be in the WVO.

After I allow a few days for the water to settle to the bottom of the WVO, I drain the water and junk off. I then heat the oil and let it settle for weeks. Leaving the bottom 8" behind, I pump the oil cold through my filters into a second drum where it gets heated again and once again allowed to settle for weeks.

I do have water separating filters on the filter station as well as both vehicles, but I think I have them there more for peace of mind or a safety net.

IMHO that is key.. making sure they dont use caustics crap. I discuss with the places that are willing to listen. Also key IMHO is the settling. With the heat we have right now, putting a tote in the sun makes it nice and toasty! All of this will have to change once it starts to get cold. But this gives me a chance to get going and set up. In time for winter.

BTW I too pump oil "cold"... well air temp at least. I dont refrigerate like some people do.

Addicted · #**125** 07-19-2007, 06:09 PM

I knew a shot at me not checking the water was comming. What about the water block filter elements that spin on. That is what I use on my truck?

Anyway here is the link to the video I made. It was for my grandparents who wanted to know what I was doing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ca8J2UFoDSQ

the first version you see at the beggining filtered about as fast as you see some WVO leaking in the next shot. I added a heating manifold to it next but it still didn't work worth a darn. I use my hand crank pump now to keep the pressure down.

Ohh and I have a two tank system now. I only did that one tank for awhile. Got extremely unlucky on a cold day and a bunch of Wax precipitated out. Not a good month

RNCarl · #**126** 07-19-2007, 11:04 PM

Sorry,

I didn't mean it as a shot.... I know of a few on the forums that refused to believe suspended water could harm........ then they lost an IP.

The better the oil the less fussing with it you have to do. Some people claim to run near-"tallow" type oil with little problem. For me, I'm not patient enough to deal with bad oil. I want to run my oil burner furnace on wvo this winter. Maybe I can be a little less picky. Until then...

C.

NC Benz · #**127** 07-21-2007, 08:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by RNCarl

Sorry,

I didn't mean it as a shot.... I know of a few on the forums that refused to believe suspended water could harm........ then they lost an IP.

The better the oil the less fussing with it you have to do. Some people claim to run near-"tallow" type oil with little problem. For me, I'm not patient enough to deal with bad oil. I want to run my oil burner furnace on wvo this winter. Maybe I can be a little less picky. Until then...

C.

Heh, I was looking into a fuel oil hot water heater

Wonder if I can make that work? Sure wish I could figure out how to run my kerosene garage heater off of this stuff for the winter.

ANYWAYS.....

450 miles off of veggie oil this week. Keeping an eye on the fuel filters...JUUUUST in case. So far so good.

Couple of things that I did..... Tested corn oil and canola oil in the freezer. Corn FROZE

solid. Canola was a little thicker but still pretty decent. Would be very easy to cut. I need to try soybean oil, but I anticipate it being about the same as corn.

This morning I was out filtering and paid attention to the thickness of the oil. It was about 66 degrees and the oil flowed just like diesel.

I was pleased to find out that one of my major oil suppliers is using canola!! The others I may have to treat differently.

Still will need to run two tank before it gets cold out. But around here I have some time :-D

This thread has been a big help!

Mercy-da-bends · #**128** 08-24-2007, 04:26 PM

OK, this may be a little too involved for some, but after over nine years of using veg this is what I've finally settled on.
By the way, I started out doing the full transesterification BS, (no way I'm going back there!)
I now use a steel 55 gal open top drum with a lock ring on it, ($5 at the local salvage yard.) I had a one inch pipe fitting brazed into it about two inches up from the bottom, ($10 at the local machine shop.) I clamped a three foot piece of clear plastic hose to that and attached a $39 circulating pump (harbor freight) to it. Onto the pump I attached a length of plain ol garden hose (with a triggered nozzle) which I use for filling the tank on the car. By attaching the pipe slightly off the bottom of the drum it gives me a good basin for sedimentation, and every six months or so I just tilt the drum over, pump out the heavy settlings, and run that back through the filter again.
Now the filter. After many years of buying expensive sock filters, I began trial and error testing using various off the shelf fabrics, and after several months and dozens of different types I now use a three foot square piece of 8 oz painters dropcloth ($9 at Lowes) which I place on top of the drum, press as much sag into it as the diameter of the drum will allow, and simply clamp it into place with the lock ring that came with the drum. This drop cloth is cotton, and I get six pieces out of each $9 sheet. Don't buy the heavy duty cloth, it's painfully slow, get the economy one, oil filtered through this passes very freely through the five micron sock filters I used to use.
Now, and I don't imagine many of you will want to go this far, but I also use an old restaurant deep fryer ($35 flea market) to heat my oil to 375 degrees before I pour it into my filter, because although I usually allow my oil to settle out for weeks in a couple of 500 gal propane tanks ($400 at a very reluctant bottled gas company) it still contains small amounts of water in solution. The heating not only removes the residual water, but it reduces the viscosity of the oil so that it runs through the filter very quickly (faster than I can heat the batches). Don't be too concerned about the little bit of electricity it takes to run the fryer for an hour or so, it's still far more economical than either chemical conversion or commercial filters. ~WARNING~ do NOT use a plastic drum or plastic buckets for this, they will MELT!!! Also, 375 degree oil is dangerous to handle. This is a very efficient system, developed over a period of several years, but does require a very high level of care and caution.
Fortunately, the heating part of this routine can be bypassed without any effect on the finished product except that you WILL have some water suspended in your oil (no matter how long you've let it settle).
And now finally, I blend 10% regular unleaded gasoline into my oil, (after cooling) which brings the viscosity down from a factor of 17 times that of pump diesel to around 5 or 6, which allows me to use the single tank system which came from the factory. (it also inhibits the microbial activity inherent in organic materials)
I've been using this system for nearly three years now, and the only drawback I've found so far is that in the winter I have to cycle the glow plugs twice, sometimes three times when cold starting. There are controls available that will do that automatically, I just haven't gone to the trouble of installing them. My ride is an 83 SD, and I change oil and filter at 4000 miles using wal-mart full synthetic. Oil consumption is around one quart per 2000 miles, (engine also has a few leaks) the same as it was when I first bought the old gal five years ago. The only difference I noticed when changing to the synthetic is that the pressure at idle is a bit lower than with the Castrol 10/40 it always used.
This may make some of you feel a little better about me, although this particular line of research is a strictly private initiative, I'm a member of a group directly involved in biofuel research at a very large university, I can't tell you which one, they would frown on my name dropping, but I can tell you that I used to see Payton Manning around here quite often

. Although my private efforts are NOT endorsed by the group proper, they are very watchful (and joke a lot at my expense) at my sometimes bizzare experiments. I have a small Kubota diesel set up in my home shop for testing this stuff, and I've had that thing torn down so many times Kubota could learn things from me! I've run that little jewel on everything from butane to roofing tar (literally) and it doesn't owe me a penny!
This entry is strictly as a private individual, it is NOT part of the official research findings of the University of ---------, and is intended only for consideration by those who like myself are incurably curious about these things. Happy greasing!

mplafleur · #**129** 08-25-2007, 12:21 AM

Mercy-da-bends,

You live in the Indy area and use filtered WVO (cut w/10% RUG) all year?

No problems in the winter with gelling?

Surflaunch · #**130** 02-10-2008, 11:58 PM

I see lots of posts about the best places to collect oil but have seen no mention of the local hospitals in you areas or using anything like the system I have set up for filtering. I've been doing this for about a year and I can say without a doubt that the best oil I have been able to collect regularly comes from the snack bar and kitchen of the local regional hospital. I talked to the staff and got them to start putting it in the original containers. They were happy to do it because now they don't have to haul it outside and dump it or the boxes in the trash. I carry it out for them. I get nine 35# containers a week or close to 50 gal from them and also have a few other smaller volume sources, cafeteria at my work and a small local resturant. All total about 65 gal a week.
I pre-screen all the oil with a fine wire kitchen strainer as I pour it into a steel 300 gal holding tank for the initial settling cycle. It's an upright oval shape. The tank is rigged with a floating pickup and has a draincock at the bottom for periodic bleed off of settled sludge. I try to wait 48hrs or more to pull oil out to the filer after having poured a newly collected batch in and try to keep that cycle at the nearly full range of the settling tank, never below half full.
I'm totally hooked on powered filtering, so for moving the oil from the tank and through a marine grade RACOR 75/1000 series filter unit, I use a 12V Fil-Rite Bio-deisel rated fuel pump clipped onto the veggie car or truck battery. So, I'm still off the grid but powered. The Fill-Rite pump has a 2 year warranty and a regular fuel hose and nozzle set up like at the gas station. The elements for the double element RACOR 75/1000 are available in 30, 10 & 2 micron and cost about $8 each. They also block any and all water from passing through. I usually batch filter about 60 gal at a time, first through a pair of 30 micron elements into a 60 gal plastic (pickle barrel) Then, after settling a few days or a week, through the 10 Micron elements into another barrel. Then after settling for a week the The final batch is through the 2 micron right into the vehicle or into a finished fuel container or another barrel until needed. I try to never go below about a foot deep so the bottom of each barrel is collecting sediment and needs cleaned out about every four or five weeks. Probably got close to 25K miles on veggie so far. The car, 1980 300CD, has the Elsebett single tank system installed and the Ford F-250 has a custom 2 tank system. If the outside temp is going to be below 35 degrees I try to keep a blend of regular diesel in the tanks, about 70/30, closer to 50/50 if it is colder. Longer durations of temps in the 20s or below require a tank of straight diesel or just parking it until it gets warmer. I still have an 04 gas powered 4runner to fall back on.
I'll see if I can put up a photo of the pump rig, It's all mounted on a hand truck dolly.

Surflaunch

thesst · #**131** 02-11-2008, 04:52 AM

55-gallon drum with water heater element installed near the bottom.

3 filters made out of old jeans (about 5 microns) going into 3 1-micron absolute sock filters.

Let the oil heat for about 8 hours. Turn the heater off and let cool for about 4 hours before pumping.

Pump a small amount in a pan for the pan test. If too much water, heat longer. Otherwise, pump into car.

bernard schwab · #**132** 09-22-2008, 10:53 PM

In the sixties I was a “Frantz oil cleaner” distributor.
It is a bypass oil filter to be installed in any car.
You no longer had to make any oil changes, because the oil stayed clean.
Those days I drove all my cars without making any oil changes.
In the beginning of this year I got involved in WVO.
All the processes I saw seemed to me expensive and cumbersome.
So I got the idea to try the old Frantz filtering system that is pushing the oil thru a roll of toilet paper. And it worked.
First I pour the dirty WVO thru a close knit window screen into a bucket.
Then I pump it thru the Frantz filter @ around 50PSI using a 1” clear water pump from Harbor freight (about $40.00). I filter 5 gallons at a time. It takes about 15 to 25 minutes and then I replace the roll with a new one. How clean is the oil after that? Less than a micron. The paper tissue also can absorb 6 oz of water.
At times the oil is very dirty so I filter it twice. I use only soy oil. I do not use any hydrogenated oil.
That process is so inexpensive and you get real clean oil. My Mercedes loves it.
Make sure that there is not a lot of water in the oil, because the paper roll will collapse.
The Frantz filter is back on the market. You can find them on ebay or at “frantzoil.com”.
I’m not affiliated with Frantz and do not sell anything.
I just want to share my process.
Good luck!

DieselBill · #**133** 05-08-2009, 07:10 PM

In regards to what JamesStein mentioned, if I am not misunderstanding there is actually a cheap way to put together a pressurized filtration system. I contacted a farmer who had a surplus gear pump - an external gear pump with two gears works best.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gear_pump
After you have inserted thread pipe into the two apertures, you'll need to attach lengths of heater hose with clamps. The hose with the oil exiting the gear pump will then be clamped to a threaded pipe which is inserted into an approximately 1 foot cylindrical water filter (screw on top), the cloth element of which reduces contaminants to a 5 micron level. A threaded pipe exits the water filter - again a clamped heater hose is your distributor here. The gear pump is bolted down to a 5-inch thick wooden base (pre-drill your holes and make sure you use washers) and is attached via pulley system (very good V-belt here) to an 1/8 horsepower washing machine motor. I wired it to a switch and after I have put the oil through an initial paint strainer/funnel cleansing, it's power on. The oil comes out in a beautiful amber color as fast as if I were at the gas pump. The water filter (heavy duty plastic) handles up to 150 psi. My only concern is cleaning the paint strainer after each cube and replacing the $1.65 element in the water filter once every 30 or so gallons. I could probably go longer, but the expense in a new filter is worth the assurance of clean oil going in to the tank.

WD8CDH · #**134** 05-09-2009, 09:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bernard schwab

<snip>The paper tissue also can absorb 6 oz of water.
At times the oil is very dirty so I filter it twice. I use only soy oil. I do not use any hydrogenated oil.
That process is so inexpensive and you get real clean oil. My Mercedes loves it.
Make sure that there is not a lot of water in the oil, because the paper roll will collapse.
The Frantz filter is back on the market. You can find them on ebay or at “frantzoil.com”.
I’m not affiliated with Frantz and do not sell anything.
I just want to share my process.
Good luck!

Remember, the filter will only absorb free water, not most of the suspended (microscopic) water and it is the suspended water that will slowly kill your engine.

oldsinner111 · #**135** 05-09-2009, 10:57 AM

I put Baby Diapers in the drums,it works.15 for 55 gals drums.