About to give up on my Centrifuge! Help...

[Hank.]

I purchased a 55 GPH deluxe centrifuge kit from PA Biodiesel. Joe is great! The kit arrived in a short time and it went together nicely. NOTE: I don't have any problems with the kit. I run the oil at 150 F (middle of barrel, hotter at the bottom), and the pressure is 90-95 psi.

What I have a problem with is actually operating the centrifuge.

I have included pictures of my setup below.

The 2 pictures at the very bottom show what I used to open the barrel cap. Open up a pipe wrench and clamp on a pair of vice grips. Bump the end of the vice grips with a small sledge hammer.

PROBLEM: No matter how long I run the centrifuge I still clean out the same amount of crud. Mind you the pictures below are from the first cleanout. The rest of the cleanouts have a little less crud, but it isn't getting thinner and thinner like I hoped! The batch of oil I currently have in my drum I have been processing for over 20 hours. Every 4-6 hours I stop the centrifuge pump and I tear down the centrifuge and clean it. I then put everything back together and start processing again.

Am I just not patient enough? What is the average processing time for a centrifuge on 40 gal of oil? Not much water is coming off the bottom of the drum. I am maintaining the oil at a temperature of 150 F in the middle of the barrel. It is warmer at the bottom of the drum where the band heater is located.

This oil came from a trucking company. The drum was sealed from the elements, and the oil came from routine oil changes. The trucks are TOP NOTCH!

ANY INPUT WOULD BE GREATLY APPRECIATED.

 

[timntrucks]

wish i knew .. but i dont .. anything at all about that set up. way back in the 70s i use to clean up one once a day er night... it was the night shifts job... it had a plate system. 52 plates that had to each be cleaned and wiped dry. and i only got a small residue off the plates in a 24 hour run. this was cleaning the oil on a 32 ft long cooper besermer engine V16 over 2 stories tall. once a year we changed the oil out. 23 55gal drums, first let the engine sit for 4 days to cool off and then 3 days to chance the oil. all the outer doors came off and someone had to go inside the crank and wipe the walls down. we only changed the oil every other year.so if you run it about 20 hours then you should be getting all the trash out in my opion

 

[JDToumanian]

Those little centrifuges are meant to be used as a bypass filter on a diesel truck with maybe a 6 gallon crankcase capacity. For a truck with more oil, the centrifuge should be much bigger.... Even the Spinner II centrifuge on my deuce is twice that size.

Is the outfit you bought it from actually advertising it for cleaning WMO? Or do they sell it for 'polishing' biodiesel? In my opinion, that is way undersized for processing WMO. As you discovered, it is overwhelmed by the amount of crud. Maybe with a spin-on filter in-line before the centrifuge it would do better. Take a look at the Wolverine Technologies centrifuges in the classifieds here, that's what I'm planning to get... I have hundreds of gallons of WMO waiting for processing, and mine is dirty stuff. Water, leaves, dirt, etc.


Jon

 

[mightymanx]

I would be patient. Diesel truck oil has LOTS of soot in it and 40 gallons is a lot of oil.

Like others have said that is a fairly small filter system

I might try uping the cleaning interval and see if it is just as full. It might be filling up in the first 10 minutes of operation and just recycling for the other 3:50.

 

[gimpyrobb]

If crap keeps collecting on the walls, keep running it. Has there been any prior filtering?

 

[G-Force]

The lower your feed rate, the longer the retention time in the bowl, the cleaner your oil will be. However, that unit is speed controlled by your pump pressure I do believe. Did you get a cross section of that unit? Could you post it?

 

[frodobaggins]

Those tiny centrifuges just aren't made to do what you want it to do. You need a bigger, motor driven centrifuge to do it properly. Otherwise your going to take a week to clean a tank of fuel.

 

[Hank.]

Maybe I spoke too soon. I think I reached the tipping point because I just emptied the bowl and it was noticeably thinner. I'll post more results tomorrow.

 

[area52]

I would heat up the oil and let it sit for a day or more and then drain out the bottom of the barrel. Also put a filter before the inlet to the centrifuge, something like a 50 micron maybe to get the large stuff out.

 

[Hank.]

Periodically I open the bottom drain and a little bit of water comes out.

 

[Hank.]

Still going... I'm down to 1 Scott towel to clean the bowl, but it is still a good size film on the wall.

No pre-filtering of the oil into the processing drum. I was trying to eliminate the need for any supplies or periodic maintenance other than cleaning the centrifuge.

 

[budman67]

I myself would think that 55gph cf would reasonably clean a 55gallon
drum of oil in 1hour as Hank thought.Maybe the companies should
step up with some real world numbers,and explain the condition of
the oil Pryor to any demonstrations. Also how many hours it took to
get to a usable state with that size machine.

I am looking into these CF's as well,and hearing a story like this,does
put the brakes on to look even deeper.I myself like the PA Bio units.

 

[Bad_Carp]

A pre-filter would greatly speed up the process as someone has already mentioned.

 

[Hank.]

What size prefilter should I try? i don't mind dewatering in the drum.

 

[gimpyrobb]

Hank, I would try 20 or 10 micron filters prior to spinning it. Should speed up the process.

 

[Hank.]

Thanks for the help guys. I'll take all of the suggestions into consideration and see what works best.

 

[PropDr]

Is it possible that the clean oil that is being discharged back into the barrel is disturbing the crud on the bottom? It might be worth while to discharge the clean oil it to a second heated barrel and then use that one for the polishing operation.

 

[mikey]

Is it possible that the clean oil that is being discharged back into the barrel is disturbing the crud on the bottom? It might be worth while to discharge the clean oil it to a second heated barrel and then use that one for the polishing operation.

The wolverine centrifuge is single pass. According to Jesse at wolverine technologies, single pass will get it to .5 micron and you've got hot oil coming into the centrifuge and one exit hose for clean oil into one container and one exit hose for crap into a second container. For really dirty wmo/wvo that should not be a problem to polish the contents of the "clean" drum by running one more pass.

The PA Biodiesel centrifuge is a bit misleading on the website. It does say clearly that it filters down to .5 micron, but it does not say that it takes up to five passes. I learned that only after buying it. The accompanying paperwork explains that you need five passes and ALSO that you should prefilter very dirty WMO and all WVO as they will fill up the centrifuge quickly.

With five passes in mind, it would be difficult to move the filtered oil to a clean drum with each pass. The way the PA Biodiesel system is setup, a pump draws the oil from the bottom and deposits it, after the centrifuge, back in a the top. According to Joe at PA Biodiesel, each pass in a 55g drum is approximately 1 hour (55gph), so you let the fuge run for five hours and it should filter down to .5 micron. The PA Biodiesel kits come with hardware to place a valve at the bottom of a drum where the pump connects to draw the wmo, in order to send it to the centrifuge. That valve should be 3" from the bottom, allowing water and crud to build up below the fuge intake. In order to send the "clean" wmo to a new drum and be able to do the five passes to get it to .5 micron, you would need multiple drums with the valve at the bottom and you'd have to move the drum top (which contains the centrifuge) back and forth between the drums approximately every hour. There may be other solutions to the valve such as a hose with a filter on the end, but that may be a pain in the ass to make sure the hose does not sit too high or too low in the drum.

In hindsight, I wish I'd purchased the wolverine fuge and I may still do that. I haven't run enough wmo through my PA biodiesel fuge yet to determine the quality after five passes, but I prefer the simplicity and the bowl size of the wolverine as well as the fact that the wolverine fuge is driven by its own motor and not by psi. Joe from PA Biodiesel has been very supportive and great and that is a plus, but the setup of his system is much more complicated than the wolverine.

That is just my humble opinion and I'm sure others will share theirs.

 

[budman67]

Thanks for the insight,Mikey

I like how the Pa unit looks in its simplicity,maybe I'll look closer at the
wolverine unit.

 

[budman67]

Does anyone have a diagram or photos of the Wolverine setup?
I found a 58 second youtube vid,but it was dark and not very
helpful.



Edit: I found a button on their site that has the info.I could have sworn that info

wasn't there a while back.http://www.wolverinetechnologiesllc.com/CentrifugeDirections.html