Wednesday 5 September 2007

Nearly there


I have had a few weeks off in August for holidays etc so progress should have been rather slow. Fortunately, the kids also took a week out to visit their Grandmother.... So progress has sped up!
The two tanks are now connected and the filters are in place too (with their own pump).


The main tank has its heating element fitted just above the start of the cone. Its a simple immersion heater with built in thermostat. The two tanks both have a site tube running down th eside to see how full they are. The same hose type is also used to link the tanks to allow them to breath. Lastly, the breather pipe vents to the outside to prevent fumes building up inside the building.

The second tank is for settling the processed mixture. The mixture of Bio and Glycerin and left over Methoxide will be pumped over and left to settle. Once the glycerin has been drained off, the remaining Bio (with some leftover Glycerin and reactants) is then pumped through the filters. They filter at 20, 10 and 5 microns. The last filter is a 1 Micron absolute filter.


In the foreground yo can see the input filter (Blue and white). This is where the first pump sucks in raw oil. If the oil has been used, it will need filtering, hence the 250 micron filter.

I've mounted the controls for the pumps and heater in this panel here: there's one switch each for the two pumps and the heater. The display on the right is a PID. It monitors a temperature and can turn another device on or off depending on the temperature I set.