Yesterday, I got a huge, 82 gallon used waterheater from a guy in Raleigh. This gray monster is going to be the cornerstone of my biodiesel homebrew operation, as I am planning to turn it into a appleseed reactor.

I also have begun filling a 250 gallon storage tank with used fryer oil. I scored that tank (two, actually) for no cost from a construction site. They had been filled with a concrete-sealing wax, and I was able to get the first one pretty clean with a pressure washer. Now I have to do the plumbing to hook it all together, so that I can pump the grease from the storage into the reactor, add the methoxide, stir, settle, pump out the glycerol, and pump the biodiesel into the wash tank.

An interesting issue is the question of where, and how, to store the Methanol. I plan to set up the Methoxide tank outside, with plumbing into the reactor in the basement. But if I buy 55 gallon drums of Methanol, where do I store them? Probably I’ll build a shed somewhere away from the house. You have to be careful with this stuff.

The nice thing about the biodiesel is the safety aspect: storing it near or in the house is no more risk than storing firewood or piles of cardboard.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 10th, 2006 at 4:00 pm and is filed under Biodiesel, Our gang. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.