on 12/1/04 3:55 AM, Keith Addison at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > Is it perhaps more important when making ethyl esters (as you do) > than with methyl esters? It didn't seem to make any difference when > we tried it (with methyl esters).
Absolutely -- the ethanol process uses a LOT more alkali, and is more prone to poor conversion, incomplete separation, etc. However, I think if you used methanol with very dirty oil, and a straight base-catalyzed process, you'd notice much less soap in the wash water after including a water+glycerine step. > A deterrent for us and others is that it would rule out subsequent > use of the glyc by-product as a heating fuel, leaving a disposal > problem instead of a useful product. OK -- I never tried to do that.... > > Is it possible to separate the by-product into its components (glyc, > FFA, sodium/potassium salts) following a water wash? > It's still easy to separate out the FFA and excess alcohol (tho ethanol comes out hydrated, of course). Probably harder to crystallize out salts, but I never do that either.... -K _______________________________________________ Biofuel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://wwia.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/biofuel Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuel archives at Infoarchive.net (searchable): http://infoarchive.net/sgroup/biofuel/
