Good day;
Having just finished installing the electricals on my reactor (water
heater) this weekend I thought I would pass along a potential risk
when converting these to 120V from their 240V original.
I don't know about most but the one I got had a square flanged
heating element and the 120V conversion element is screw in round.
This in and of itself is not a major problem, although a word of
warning is in order. The conversion flange can be bought wherever
they sell the heaters, just ask. What happems though is that once
you have disabled the upper element and installed the conversion
flange to be able to screw in your 120V element the lower one now
sticks out further than it did originally with the flat square
flange so that you are not able to put the metal plate back on the
lower part without getting contact of the poles and shorting out the
unit. A work around would be to use a ball pean hammer and dent
out a space for the protruding element or simply not replace the
lower plate and cover the lot with insulation, duct tape itin place
and then proceed to complete the extra insulation required by this
sort of design that enables it to hold in it's heat better for a
more complete reaction and settling of the glycerine layer.
Mine is also equiped with an emergency overheat cut off similar to a
fuel cut off in a car or electrical breaker switch should things get
too hot. To reset all one has to do is push the button back in,
something like the breaker switch, but the problem is that you have
installed all that extra insulation around the body of the water
heater/reactor, so it would be very helpful when wrapping the extra
insulation to cut out a flap type door in it so that you have access
to the lower control area of the immersion heater element should you
want to use it for methanol recovery or should the emergency cut off
reset pop out and you need to get at it.
This week I am installing the insulation on my unit now that the
electricals are all done. I now have a really neat electrical
control box that my brother-in-law made (he's an electrician)that
has breakers as on/off switches and corresponding twist-lock entries
for my pre-heat tank (equiped with a 120V immersion heater element),
my 1 clear water pump, and another for my reactor. Also included is
a regular double entry electrical outlet for things such as the
lights,the bubbler should I choose to use one, the hot plate for use
during titration so I can have warm water to keep all that iso warm,
the blender for test batches ect... The whole unit is 120V so it can
be plugged in anywhere 120V is available. The breakers are all 15A
so as to not overload the system. The control box also has an
emergency kill switch that cuts ALL power to everything should I
need to make an emergency halt for whatever reason.
My first attempts will be to use the 30 liter pre-heat tank as
larger test batches before foraging into full 100 liter processing.
The pre-heat tank is also equiped with a standard garden hose drain
and once I get a paint stirring attachment for the drill I can use
the pre-heat tank to both process and then subsequently wash the BD
after draining the glycerine via the garden hose drain at the very
bottom. This pre-heat tank, of course, is not 100% necessary,
although it assures that when I do load the reactor it will be with
hot oil so that the pump won't have to work quite so hard to get it
flowing and I have it set up at a hgher level so the il will be
gravity fed into the pump.
Another neat idea that the bro-in-law came up with ( that is not yet
tested) is to attach a small ball valve with tube into the priming
port of the pump and that way fresh canola oil can be loaded via
this tube to prime the pump instead of opening the screw down cap,
filling and then replacing the cap and hoping that you did it right.
With the attachment you open the fresh oil feed/primer and it keeps
on coming until you can see that the pump is doing it's things
properly and you then simply close the ball valve. So far this all
sounds great in theory but the real test will come when I actually
try it out in the real world, I'll post a result even if it is
embarrassing :)
L.
Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ~--
Yahoo! Domains - Claim yours for only $14.70
http://us.click.yahoo.com/Z1wmxD/DREIAA/yQLSAA/FGYolB/TM
~-
Biofuel at Journey to Forever:
http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html
Biofuels list archives:
http://infoarchive.net/sgroup/biofuel/
Please do NOT send Unsubscribe messages to the list address.
To unsubscribe, send an email to:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Yahoo! Groups Links
* To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/biofuel/
* To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
* Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
