Thomas Kelly
Wed, 31 May 2006 05:21:35 -0700
Jason & Katie,
I'm not sure what you mean when you say "clean the glycerine for
compost".
Many people compost the glycerine cocktail w/o any treatment. I think
this is best done when KOH is used as the caustic rather than NaOH.
I do separate the glycerine because I produce quite a bit of BD these
days. I'm concerned about pouring Kilo after Kilo of caustic, of which 70%,
by weight, is Potassium. Sure it's a valuable soil nutrient, but I'd like to
control how much is added to my garden .... which has done just fine on
pre-BD compost. I also am attempting to recover methanol and have uses for
the other components of the mix.
I used hydrochloric acid (sold in hardware stores as "muriatic acid")
before I was able to locate phosphoric.
I did a few small test batches and got good separation.
The difference will be the type of mineral "salt" that will precipitate
out.
Ex:
Hydrochloric Acid + Lye (NaOH) forms table salt and water
HCl + NaOH ----> NaCL (table salt) + H2O
The table salt is not especially valuable; throw it out?
The salt falls to the bottom and you get FFAs forming a layer on top and
the crude glycerine (+ most of the excess methanol) forming a bottom layer.
The FFAs and the glycerine/methanol are composed of Cs, Hs, and Os.
They will decompose into CO2 and H2O. They supply nothing in the way of soil
nutrients, but I have found that
they appear to accelerate decomposition within a compost pile ....... not
only a safe way to dispose of the mix, but some benefit to be gotten.
KOH (during processing) and H3PO4 (split)
is preferred because the salt produced is Potassium Phosphate .....
valuable as fertilizer.
The point is that different acids can be used to split the cocktail
into FFAs and crude glycerine w. methanol. The
difference is in the salt (and its value) that is produced.
Vinegar is an organic acid, which tend to be weak acids. It would take
a lot of vinegar to split the cocktail.
Probably more expensive than hydrochloric and I don't see that the salt
produced would have more value.
***By value I don't mean financial, as in sell for profit. I
dissolve some of the potassium phosphate produced by the split in water and
add it to my compost piles. It has value as in ... can be put to good use.
Sorry to get so wordy, but your "goofy question" is part of a subject
that is of great interest to me.
The splitting of the cocktail may not have the financial payoff that
brewing BD does, but the feeling of putting to good use what others have
called "waste products" is akin to the feeling I get when I fill the
tank(s) w. BD I brewed at home.
Best of luck to you,
Tom
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jason& Katie" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <Biofuel@sustainablelists.org>
Sent: Wednesday, May 31, 2006 12:13 AM
Subject: [Biofuel] more goofy questions
> what other, more available acids can be used in place of phosphoric to
> clean
> glycerine for compost? i have been reading for three hours, and i cant
> find
> any experiments or documentation. am i not looking in the right places?
> has
> anyone tried using vinegar? this is really bothering me. any ideas?
>
>
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