Making a batch of Biodiesel from used Canola oil - HOW TO MAKE BIO-DIESEL!

okay as promised this is part two of the  video we're gonna make a hundred liter batch   of biodiesel from start to finish if you didn't  catch the first video i did in this series where   i'm telling you five reasons to not do this five  reasons not to make biodiesel check it out now   i'll put a card up i'm not recommending that  anybody makes biodiesel there's lots of reasons   why not to do it uh this is a demonstration so  let's work together and make make a full batch just for scientific purposes of course okay  so we start with uh there's some used canola   oil here uh and i do hundred liter batches so  okay so my hot water tank here uh i've marked   out the uh the volume uh measurements here so  here's 50 liters and you can see i've already   loaded 50 liters into the into the processor  now you can see the oil level right about there   we need to put another 50 liters in to get up  to that 100 liter mark which is right here in   the water heater i only run the bottom element and  i'm running a 240 volt element in there but only   running it at 120 volts so it takes a long time  to warm up but it's it's just kind of a slow warm   it uh it doesn't start boiling the oil or  anything like that it just sort of gradually   heats it up over three or four hours okay so the  first step in the process is to take our used oil   and we pour it into this center tank here   which is and i'll just grab the camera real quick  to show you which is where we put the waste oil in   right now i've got a screen there you see just a  just a screen to filter out the big chunks now the   screen in that tank is just there to filter  out the big chunks you don't need to filter   pre-filter the oil too much all you really need  to do is get any big pieces caught in that screen   so that's the first step in the process  is to dump the used oil through the screen   into our holding tank and i've got this marked  at 50 liters as well so i fill it up to 50 liters use the pump to pump it into the tank  the hot water heater and then fill it   up again to 50 liters and do it again and that  gives me my 100 liters of vegetable oil that i   like to make a hundred liter batches with  okay so just a matter of pouring this in it   just goes through the screen this oil is very  clean somebody looks like they maybe just used   it once to cook a turkey or something i got this  from a friend i think it was thanksgiving turkey okay we'll just keep doing  that i got a bunch of jugs here   keep doing that till we get up to the 50 mark  and then we'll load it into the processor okay we've run into a bit of a glitch here um  i'm out of oil everything's empty and i didn't   get up to my 50 liter mark so going back  to one of the reasons why it's difficult   to do this and why you might not want to do it  i talked about in the first video it's difficult   to get oil sometimes i'm out of oil and i don't  have any scheduled pickups to get more oil so   that looks like about 10 liters short so  this is 40 liters there's 50 in here already   let's just do a 90 liter batch you can make any  size batch you want as long as you're above the   the heating element in the hot water in the in the  water heater um so we can do a 90 liter batch it's   okay uh i'll just reduce the other chemicals  uh proportionally so i'll just do 10 less of   everything so let's do a let's do a 90 liter  batch for this particular rug so the step here now   is uh is i've got a valve here at the bottom  of this uh this barrel this is an up this is a   actually a 65 liter uh drum that has the threaded  bungs on the bottom and i've sealed the one up   with silicone and tightened it really tight and  i've put just standard ball valve three-quarter   inch threaded ball valves into into that bung  there and they seal up really nice with a little   bit of silicone on the threads so what i can do  now is open up the bottom here to let the oil free   and then uh there's a pipe that comes through  this motor and you can see just with gravity   it's pushing up a little bit it's pushing  up okay through here uh sorry through the   bottom through the input of the motor down here  let me see if i can show you with this camera so what happens now with that bung with the uh  with this valve open the oil's free to flow into   a pipe and then into that motor there and then  on the outside of the motor it'll come in the   outlet of the motor will come up this tube and  load into the hot water tank at the top okay so   what we can do now is make sure that  we have uh this valve closed because   that's for later that's where we send the  finished fuel over to the finishing tank   right now we want everything closed except for  this and this and then we can turn our pump on and   i've just wired a standard house switch to control  that pump so let's do that now let's turn this on   you see now that oil is flowing  up into the into the tank and you can see our oil level in our tank here is  slowly dropping as that oil gets pumped into the   to the tank to the water heater so all right just about done well now i can hear it sucking air  now so we're empty so we can shut   the valve off at the bottom there okay uh  now what's happening is i'm still running so the pump is still running  what's happening is [Music] the oil is going up this tube into  the heater and then it's coming out it's coming out here and then  just going back into the pump   and it's just doing a big loop right  now just doing a big circular loop so we can shut the shut the motor off  for now later when we mix the chemicals   in that's how we mix them up okay so we'll  shut that off and you should see through this   effectively with is a sight  glass we should see our level stop dropping there around this this hundred  liter mark that i made with a sharpie here   and you can see it stopping there so  that's that's how much oil is in the   in the processor right now  and as i mentioned [Music] top elements disconnected bottom  element is the one we use [Music] and i've just got the power going into the heater  run throughout just a simple switch here so   it comes comes out of the wall into here so i  can i can easily control the control the hot   water heater on and off and see whether it's on  or off so we'll turn it on now and start sending   power to that element again 120 volts  running a 240 volt element down here   and that will take a couple hours now we're  going to let this sit for a couple hours   and heat the oil and we're going for about  140 degrees fahrenheit total so 130 135 is   what you need for the reaction and we've got  this thermometer here that measures the outlet   of the water of the water tank so once we've  got the oil heated we'll turn the pump back   on and get things circulating past this this  thermometer here and we'll want to see about 140 we need 135 but i like to go a little bit more i  like to go 140 because when you're adding the the   methanol and and and everything in you have the  element off of course and while you're doing that   and waiting your oil temperature starts to drop  so i like to go a little bit on the high side   now methanol boils at i think just over 150  degrees fahrenheit so you can't go too high   or you'll boil the methanol when you put it in  so i found the sweet spots around 140 fahrenheit okay so now really it's just a bunch of waiting um  we'll let it let it heat and we'll come back once   we're up to 140 degrees and do the next step okay it's been a couple hours let's have a  look now i haven't run the pump yet so let's   uh let's run the pump the element's still on and  we'll get this oil circulating through the system   and see what the temperature is up to now [Music] [Laughter] see you can feel  the heat there it's warm   it's coming up again we're aiming for about 140 and that's where i have the thermostat set  so that'll kick out when it gets that hot it's been that's probably been at least three  hours so it should be enough to get it there   but as i mentioned this is a 240 volt element  running at 120 so it takes a while [Laughter] so so it looks like we're pretty much there we'll  let it continue to heat while we mix up the uh   methanol potassium hydroxide mix the catalyst okay now that we've got the oil heated  up to about 140 degrees fahrenheit   it's time to start working on the catalyst  so uh remember we're making a 90 batch so   i use 20 methanol to oil volume so if we  have 90 liters of oil we need 18 liters   of methanol so that's exactly what i've got in  this container here and then in terms of catalyst we're going to use 90 percent of this bag i've  i've measured this as the right amount and i   won't get into all the math of uh of how much  catalyst to put in it's it's roughly a kilogram   or two 2.2 pounds roughly so we're going to use  about 10 percent less for this patch okay so this   stuff does produce a bit of gas you don't want  to breathe it in you should use ventilator blah   blah blah but you shouldn't be doing this to begin  with so i wouldn't worry too much about it i got a   funnel here to get the catalyst into the methanol  so we'll just pour it all in less ten percent just put this cap on this  is a cap with a valve in it and we're just going to make sure it's tight and  closed we're just going to rock it back and forth   to mix up that catalyst with the methanol it  dissolves pretty quickly it does produce a little   bit of heat and a little bit of pressure but not  much so sometimes i let the pressure out like that but we'll just let that sit for 15-20  minutes and completely dissolve [Music] okay now we're ready to introduce the catalyst  which is all mixed up into the process so the   first thing we want to do is make sure that we  have this element off we don't want the element on   when we're introducing catalyst methanol  so that element has to be off we don't   want it producing any heat we're up  to 140 degrees here on the temperature   readout so that's good that's where we  want to be so what i've got is i built   a little table here oh before we go any  further i'll just show you an example here   i knocked this valve and spilled a bunch of oil  all over the place so back to my other video   which you've seen one of my points of why you  shouldn't do this is because you'll make a mess   you see how easy it is you can make a big bloody  mess doing this work anyway i've got some floor   dry on there it's fine i always use a piece of  cardboard in front as well to help absorb things   okay let's go into introducing the  catalyst again make sure that's off and i built a little table here to set this on  so i don't have to hold it because it's heavy   right got here so into this hose we're going  to introduce the catalyst into the pump   it's going to go up and down back out here we'll  introduce all that catalyst and then we'll just   mix we just run the pump and mix the biodiesel  and the catalyst all together for about an hour   okay let's get started um so we'll open this valve a  little bit so we can get some air in and we'll open this valve to get things flowing   and then this one and then we'll get the  pump on again double check elements off pump is on so now we have catalyst flowing   into our system and you can see that colors  changed here so there's a mix of the biodiesel   and the methanol in in the tube here which is  obviously a different color than just the pure oil   for a mix of oil and catalyst it's not biodiesel  yet but it's starting to become biodiesel we just back this valve off a little bit that'll  slow the flow out of the machine which will create   a bit more of a vacuum here which will allow us to  drain the catalyst tank out a little bit quicker all right we're just about there this little hose here gives me a little bit of  flexibility i can move things around with it i find this is a pretty good way to  do it there's really no splashing   you know i keep this air vent loose but on there but you know there's it's really  kind of a sealed system so   you know there's nothing that's going to  splash back up in your face or anything [Music] okay when it's empty i'm gonna  close this valve off and you can   remove this guy and get it out of the  way now you can see we're starting to mix   so i can pull this one right open now make sure  all the valves are open everything else is closed and now it's just a matter of mixing  and up here splashing down into the tank and i usually do it for about an hour an hour  i think is is probably pretty good it might   not even need an hour but my feeling  is if it mixes for an hour it's gone   every liter in there has gone through the loop a  bunch of times it's tends to be pretty well mixed [Music] okay so we'll let that go for an hour  and then we'll talk about the next test   the next steps are really just going to be to   shut the pump off and let it sit overnight  but we'll talk about that in a minute [Music] and just one more quick note  as we mix our temperature is   like i said just a little bit below 140 maybe 135  which is just perfect we need it to be above 130   and for the hour or so that it mixes it will  be it's it's between 130 and well 135 and   137 or so so that's perfect so  we'll let it continue to mix   let it do the loop a bunch of times [Music] and  then we'll shut it down and we'll let it sit   so at that point once it's mixed we  want to just let it sit in the tank   at least overnight sometimes i let it sit for  two or three days but i wanted to get this   video out to you guys so i'm gonna let it sit  overnight and what will happen is the glycerin   will start to separate from the biodiesel  you can see here in this little tank i don't   know how well that shows but the that's mostly  glycerin with a little bit of biodiesel on top   i don't know if that's coming through very well is that any better yeah so you can see the  glycerin settles to the bottom and the more   clear liquid at the top is the biodiesel so that's  what's going to be happening as we let the let   this sit after it's mixed up is the glycerin  is going to settle to the bottom be about 20   liters of glycerin and then the biodiesel is on  top but we'll get to that later when we start dealing with the finished biodiesel and  draining off the glycerin and so forth   so that's coming up next okay so it's all mixed up for about an hour uh  you can see our level's about there right now   certainly above 100 liter mark because we put  90 liters of biodiesel plus about 18 liters   of catalyst in so we're at what 110 liters  something like that at that level now we'll   let it cool down we'll let it sit overnight what's  happening in there now is the reactions occurring   and the glycerin will be dropping out of the  biodiesel and we're going to end up with about   20 liters of glycerin on the bottom which will  drain off in the next step and then we'll have   biodiesel which we can take to the next step of  pumping it over and starting to wash it and get   it ready for use so we'll let it sit let it cool  we'll let it react and we'll wait till tomorrow okay welcome back it's the next day the  biodiesel has been sitting overnight and   so what we should have now is we should  have a lot of glycerin settled out of the   out of the vegetable oil leaving the  biodiesel on top so we'll find a jug   and what we do here let me just  adjust the camera angle here for you now this is the the low part of the  system so what we can do is is have our   valve open out of the bottom of  the tank and then open this valve   and what that will do is it'll drain from the  bottom of the hot water tank which should be full   of glycerin right now and we'll just drain  it into this empty jug or mostly empty jug pull this out of here so we should see that  nice black glycerin if we had a reaction   and the biodiesel fell out so  let's see what this looks like yeah look at that so that's the dark  glycerin off the bottom of the oil more mess and we should end up getting well we put 18  liters of the catalyst in so we should get   up get about 18 liters of glycerin off  the bottom if we had a perfect reaction   you never get a perfect reaction but i'm  hoping for at least 15 or 16 liters of   glycerin off the bottom which will  mean a mostly complete reaction   which which will mean we have a nice biodiesel to  work with so we'll continue to drain this until it   starts to run clear more clear more like yellow  which means that we've hit the biodiesel layer okay you can see we've just about got probably  just about 16 or 17 liters off i think   and it's starting to turn to biodiesel you see the  biodiesel thinner so it's starting to shoot out   and it's starting to get clear so before  i make a mess i'm going to shut this off he's starting to run clear okay we've got all the glycerin or 99 of it  drained out of the water tank leaving just   uh basically back to about our 90 liters of  biodiesel with the glycerin stripped out so the next step is to transfer the raw biodiesel  across this way into the finishing tank right here   so the same pump that was used to circulate  is used to transfer the biodiesel from here   to here so um basically all we need to do is  make sure we we close off the valve that's   the valve that would allow it to continue to  circulate there and there's a t here with a valve   that will open the flow up to go across the bottom  here the pump and across that way okay here we go now i'll just grab the camera here i'll show you what this looks like up here try not to drop the camera there's the biodiesel coming into the bottom water tank across and up okay we've pumped the entire  contents of the water tank   into our finishing tank you can see it's done here so we'll quickly shut the pump off and close this  off so it doesn't start running back   okay so that's closed this could be open now and we have our roughly 90 liters plus whatever  was in there before of biodiesel in here now   okay let's let's talk a little bit about this pump okay let's talk a little bit about  this now there's two outlets here   uh there's two threaded bungs on the bottom of  these of these plastic barrels it's an upside   down barrel that i've cut the top of this is  threaded right into the bottom so you can take   the any contaminants that continue to  fall out of the biodiesel off the bottom   so usually i let it sit in here for a day or two  a little bit more glycerin will come off and then   after we do the washing we take the any soap  or any other contaminants that fall out of this   tube here this one over here is on a six inch  sand pipe so it's coming from about there and that's where the finished fuel goes up  when we're done so we do a sand pipe because   any gunk tends to settle toward the bottom  so we're taking the biodiesel off six inches   up so you're always getting a little bit  cleaner fuel when you're dealing with your   finished fuel so we'll get into all that in a  few minutes um but the first thing we can do is   just make sure nothing has fallen out  usually you let this sit overnight and when it starts running clear out of here which  it is um right now because we just transferred it   then we're ready to go onto the washing step  now for washing let's get right into that okay coming over to the right side of the machine  here i've got this air pump right here this is a   hot tub air pump so these pumps are fairly  inexpensive they're about 100 bucks i think   and they flow a lot of air and they're  designed to run for a long time right   like in a spa in a hot tub and a jacuzzi type  thing so it's just 120 full air pump that comes   out of here i've got a little adapter piece pcb  adapter that then brings the air up this pcb up the pcv tube and then down into the bottom of  the tank and at the bottom of the tank i've got   a a a x splitter that uh we've put pcv is we've  got a pcvx in the bottom of the tank with a bunch   of holes drilled in it so that the air can come  out from the bottom of the tank and bubble up   and evaporate all the old any trace  methanol or water that might be in there and   what that'll do is is once the methanol  is gone any soaps or other contaminants   have less tendency to hang on to the biodiesel i  don't know the chemistry of it i don't know but   apparently the once you remove the methanol any  contaminants will not hang onto the biodiesel   particles or molecules or whatever and they'll  fall out with gravity to the bottom of the   biodiesel which you which we can then drain  off of our low or low part of the tank there   so that's what's going on right now next uh we  will turn on our hot tub air pump this is an   air bleed right here if there's too much pressure  you can just bleed some of the pressure off here   i usually just go full pressure and and run air  through the biodiesel for maybe two hours to make   sure everything's evaporated out this is to be  done in a ventilated conditions with the garage   door open because there could be some methanol  fumes in the air and so forth we don't want to you   know breathe that in or create a fire hazard so i  i you do that in an outside type environment only   but you don't do this at all so don't  worry about it you don't you're not   going to do this because you should not  make biodiesel see my previous video   okay so let's get this going uh oh first here hang  on let's look at the t see if we can see the t this precarious oh [ __ ] no  you can't see it it's too uh   it's too cloudy we should have looked at it before  anyway imagine at the bottom there there's a t   or really an axe a four-way splitter with uh 10  inches of pcv on each end with a bunch of holes   drilled in them bubbling up the bubbling up the  uh the air through the biodiesel from the bottom   here it's sitting on the bottom and they're just  bubbles all those bubbles so let's check this out i just got this on a plug over here [Music] so these pumps aren't very noisy  either which is really nice now i put a old bed sheet over this sometimes  because there is a little bit of oil mist that   will come out with that violent uh violent shaking  violent uh bubbling and it can get a little bit on   like a car or on the garage floor you'll notice  a little bit of a film sometimes not much   but this acts almost like a filter  the air can still come through   but the uh any oil particles will  kind of gets absorbed into the fabric   over the course of about a year so it gets  oily and then we have to throw it away now finally once the about two hours of bubbling  has occurred we let it sit for a day or two   and then take any contaminants  off the bottom you'll see some some soaps and maybe some cloudy diesel maybe  a little bit of glycerin falling out the bottom and once that's done then we're ready  for the finished product we're done   we're done making our biodiesel so i've  got a uh biodiesel safe farm tank hose here   and just a farm filler thing and now the  biodiesel comes out of the standpipe which is six inches up here comes into this  pump which i've got on the switch here   and uh is pumped up through the this farm  filter here it's a 10 micron farm filter to   just remove any last minute contaminants if  any solids happen to make their way through   the process or whatever goes through a farm  filter and then into our green hose here   and into your car or into a jerry can so  that's how we make biodiesel with this process you can use the pump to pump it or you can  gravity feed it when there's lots of diesel   here there's some gravity pressure so usually  i do that so if we just let's just open this up   and our valve here of course and  we can see the finished product so here's our finished product finished biodiesel which you shouldn't use for   the reasons discussed before and you shouldn't  make it anyway thanks for watching this video guys so thanks for watching this video guys

Channel: Greg's Garage

Views: 98,214

Keywords: biodeisel, biodiesel, biofuel, alternative energy, how to make biodiesel, bio diesel, deisel, home brew, biodiesel processor

Id: x1_74ur0b40

Length: 33min 57sec (2037 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 25 2022