Waste Vegetable/Animal Oil

[Rayden]

So after quick search I couldn't find anything about WVO. After many hours of google search I couldn't find anything that corresponds to my situation. For experiment i got this canister of used kitchen oil from this one restaurant. But after heating it to about 77F, agitating it and then letting it settle i get this:

So I have FOUR layers of stuff. From internet I saw only two to three layers being settled out (oil, water, food).
In my case it is 4.

Can anyone tell me why this is and how would you go about separating oils from water/food?
I presume that first layer is, oil second layer is food/water, third layer is animal fat that melted from foods being cooked and fourth layer is again food/water.
But if my assumptions were correct why would there be 2 layers of food/water mixture , why wouldn't they just combine in one layer?

P.S.
Im sorry if this is noob post , I really need someone's help on this.

Thank you guys .

 

[BillMasen]

What are you trying to do?? make bio diesel ??

https://www.thoughtco.com/make-biodiesel-from-vegetable-oil-605975

 

[Rayden]

What are you trying to do?? make bio diesel ??

First things first , I want to see how does WVO behaves, what to actually do with it to purify it.
First I want to filter it and then dewater it. This is my first contact with WVO. So I'm weirded out why i have 4 layers instead usual 2 to 3.



I watched that one and it seems pretty easy. Which I doubt.

 

[DrHenley]

So after quick search I couldn't find anything about WVO. After many hours of google search I couldn't find anything that corresponds to my situation. For experiment i got this canister of used kitchen oil from this one restaurant. But after heating it to about 77F, agitating it and then letting it settle i get this:
View attachment 12082
So I have FOUR layers of stuff. From internet I saw only two to three layers being settled out (oil, water, food).
In my case it is 4.

Can anyone tell me why this

Top layer is primarily oil.
Second layer is an emulsion of oil and water with some sediment entrapped.
Third layer is primarily water
Bottom layer is primarily sediment

 

[Rayden]

Top layer is primarily oil.
Second layer is an emulsion of oil and water with some sediment entrapped.
Third layer is primarily water
Bottom layer is primarily sediment

So basically first and second layer are usable oil that i could further purify or turn to biodisel.
I'm thinking using gravity to siphon off first and second layer then move on to filtering, because this way i can save my filters for more uses than if I filter everything.
And third and fourth layer can be "throw out" ( Im thinking mixing 3rd and 4th layer with crushed grains ( corn , wheat etc. And fed my chickens with it). Oil was taken from the restaurant 2 day ago so its not more than 5 days old.

What would be your assumption on percentage of usable oil in the third and fourth layer. Is it worth to try and extract every bit of oil out of?

 

[Rayden]

So a little update. After agitating the canister again and letting it sit in a room that is 82F. Oil started to develop less of 3rd and fourth layer. But more of second layer and around same of first layer.


Here is pic to compare.

Looks like i made it worse than it was. Now i will have to filter whole canister , because it seems that water/oil emulsion fused with sediment and now its one big mess.

 

[bigpaul]

too much hassle, dont see the point, in the here and now its easy to buy petrol and diesel and post SHTF I wont be going far from base, its not fuel that will be the problem it'll be spare parts and the equipment to fit them, most modern cars they cant even diagnose the problem without a computer.

 

[Rayden]

too much hassle, don't see the point, in the here and now its easy to buy petrol and diesel

Listen here, your here and now may be different than someone's else. Did you have that in mind.
Gallon of diesel cost around 2.8 bucks in USA.
Where I am it costs $6.32.
That canister of oil from pictures guess how much i paid for it ZERO , its about 2 gallons. If I convert one gallon to diesel or any usable fuel I can save 6 bucks. Have in mind that hourly wage here is 4.5 USD.

So yeah for someone who works as delivery to almost every restaurant in my city I have access to hundreds gallons of free oil.
It literally makes me money picking up used oil IF I get to the point of making diesel or using filtered oil as fuel.

 

[BillMasen]

Listen here, your here and now may be different than someone's else. Did you have that in mind.
Gallon of diesel cost around 2.8 bucks in USA.
Where I am it costs $6.32.
That canister of oil from pictures guess how much i paid for it ZERO , its about 2 gallons. If I convert one gallon to diesel or any usable fuel I can save 6 bucks. Have in mind that hourly wage here is 4.5 USD.

So yeah for someone who works as delivery to almost every restaurant in my city I have access to hundreds gallons of free oil.
It literally makes me money picking up used oil IF I get to the point of making diesel or using filtered oil as fuel.

can you check out your local schools, colleges and hospitals they also often have waste cooking oil available

 

[DrHenley]

What would be your assumption on percentage of usable oil in the third and fourth layer. Is it worth to try and extract every bit of oil out of?

Very little, not worth fooling with.

 

[Rayden]

can you check out your local schools, colleges and hospitals they also often have waste cooking oil available

School food here is very different than in USA. Schools and colleges don have food prepared as in cantina in USA.
Hospitals also do not use deep fried foods in feeding their patients or staff.
Usally it is stews and dry foods as bread and jam and/or butter. Also soups are a main thing for hospitals. The way they go about meats they usually boil it and serve it to patients.

So its a no go. Maybe if I could get a hold of a plastic surgery hospital and get that liposuction fat. Might just use it for a good purpose.

Primary and basically only source of used oil are restaurants and fast foods. I also deliver for McDonalds kfc and etc. So if i could make a deal with them to take their oil would be awesome. But they act like they are so much more than other people so they discus me quite a lot.

 

[Rayden]

Very little, not worth fooling with.

So basically throw it out. Do you guys think using it as feedstock for animals is okay. Would the animals get sick xd.

Also what you think about the new mixture i got. Looks like agitating it again emulsified more of oil/water and sediment ?

 

[bigpaul]

Listen here, your here and now may be different than someone's else. Did you have that in mind.
Gallon of diesel cost around 2.8 bucks in USA.
Where I am it costs $6.32.
That canister of oil from pictures guess how much i paid for it ZERO , its about 2 gallons. If I convert one gallon to diesel or any usable fuel I can save 6 bucks. Have in mind that hourly wage here is 4.5 USD.

So yeah for someone who works as delivery to almost every restaurant in my city I have access to hundreds gallons of free oil.
It literally makes me money picking up used oil IF I get to the point of making diesel or using filtered oil as fuel.

the oil may be free but I would need a scientific and engineering degree to know how to build the equipment required to process old chip oil, fuel here is around £6 a gallon not sure what that is in $ .
and in a post SHTF situation these places one get the old oil from wont exist so continuing supply will be non existent.
I think I'll pass.

 

[Rayden]

the oil may be free but I would need a scientific and engineering degree to know how to build the equipment required to process old chip oil, fuel here is around £6 a gallon not sure what that is in $ .
and in a post SHTF situation these places one get the old oil from wont exist so continuing supply will be non existent.
I think I'll pass.

You really don't need any degreeeeeee. Only will to learn and adapt.

Rebuilding any civilization post SHTF , you will need transport of heavy building materials , food probably water too.
Unless you going to be alone for the rest of your life and then again people always aim to form communities. You cant have any large community without good logistics.
Are you going to use ox/horse pairs for the rest of time. I don't think so. First of all you have to feed them and take care of them every single day no exemptions. Working tractor you start do the job and you let it sit in the garage and with careful usage , simple tractor can run for ages without repairs.

On the other hand planting sunflowers is possible almost anywhere on planet Earth. Harvesting isn't so hard either. Turning sunflower seed in oil isn't hard either. There is hand cranked presses that you can use to turn any seed in to oil.

So oil is not hard to create from regular seeds all around us.

Creating diesel is a bit complicated but not impossible even post SHTF. In the end you can limit your self to trucks/tractors/cars that will run on pure veggie oil.
Motorcycles, scooters, chainsaws etc can run on alcohol.


After pressing the oils out of seeds , you can use what's left to ferment and create alcohol to use it in tools etc.
Ford intended his trucks/cars to run on alcohol after fermenting all that corn ( Just to mention cattle digests corn better if fermented and are able to use more calories out of it). I can go on but you get the point.

Also not every person post SHTF will do everything in community. I will have my role you will have yours etc.

 

[bigpaul]

Rebuilding of civilisation will come a long way down the line, not years, decades and probably many decades post SHTF, I will be long gone before any of that occurs, thats for the following generations not us.
I prefer peace and quiet, solitude and isolation, I dont like people, I will be living a very simple life "close to the earth" as we say here.
I'll be the old hermit that lives up the lane.

 

[BillMasen]

So basically throw it out. Do you guys think using it as feedstock for animals is okay. Would the animals get sick xd.

Also what you think about the new mixture i got. Looks like agitating it again emulsified more of oil/water and sediment ?

Many vegatable oils emit toxic smoke when heated whilst cooking, So they may MAY not be suitable to feed to critters

 

[bigpaul]

I wouldnt feed oils to animals or anything cooked either, unless you want them to drop dead in front of you.
most animals, unless predators, are vegetarians.

 

[Rayden]

I wouldnt feed oils to animals or anything cooked either, unless you want them to drop dead in front of you.
most animals, unless predators, are vegetarians.

Primarily I was thinking chickens, I see those little buggers eating everything.

 

[MNwr786]

I would use an old electric deep fryer to drive the water off (till the snap crackle popping ends) and filter with a couple layers of cheese cloth once cooled, then, follow the instructions in the video with the guy in the white shirt. The other video has a few crucial steps missing. Titration and washing are important as too little lye is bad, too much is a waste and putting caustic salts in an aluminum engine head might lead to a short-lived smile.

Those recipes call for methanol, and although it is a dirt cheap industrial chemical, on a consumer level where diesel is over $6 a gallon, buying it in anything other than a 55gal drum may be a waste of money.

The videos mention methoxide, but reacting hydroxide with alcohol hardly makes the methoxide anion, the equilibrium is in strong favor of the starting material. Methoxides are usually made with anhydrous alcohol and alkali metal. So if KOH isn't strong enough of a base to deprotonate methanol, why the methanol? I don't know for sure but I'd guess to increase the solubility of the hydroxide (which i think would work alone if it were soluble in the oil). If you had some apparatus to continuously agitate and warm the mixture to keep the base in contact with the oil, I think water and lye would do the same job as methanol and lye just sitting for a week. But that's just my GUESS ~ i might try it if I get bored.

You could always make a wood gasifier with a centrifugal ash filter to run a gasoline vehicle if you have one. You can also make wood alcohol by distilling wood chips (methanol, acetic acid and acetone are the crude distillation products which could then be redistilled).

As for giving chickens waste fryer oil??? Not sure thats a good idea. Oil candles, heating fuel and maybe forge quench oil would be better uses.

 

[Rayden]

So if KOH isn't strong enough of a base to deprotonate methanol, why the methanol?

Every video out there uses methanol. I don't know man.

If you had some apparatus to continuously agitate and warm the mixture to keep the base in contact with the oil, I think water and lye would do the same job as methanol and lye just sitting for a week. But that's just my GUESS

So melting KOH in water and than mixing it with oil would do the same job as melting KOH in alcohol and mixing it with oil???

You could always make a wood gasifier with a centrifugal ash filter to run a gasoline vehicle if you have one.

I did this with my scooter engine , ran it on syngas and on methane.


I will filter the oil Monday probably , that's when i have free day to experiment.