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Ken,
Always good to hear from you.
My in-laws own a bus company. In the past ten years they have literally
gone through a million gallons of diesel fuel and their busses have logged
millions of miles. During that time they have had only two separate
occassions in which filters were clogged due to microbes in the fuel. It
does not appear to be a common problem. On both occassions the busses had been
out of sevice for a month or more and both had water in the fuel
tanks.
If it turns out that there are microbes in my
recent batches, it is probably a fluke .... an oddity. But
if BD is biodegradable in the soil and water, then something(s) in
soil/water must eat it. It's not hard for me to imagine how soil and
water microbes could get into my wash tank.
A couple of things to consider:
1. I use the final wash water of the previous batch as the
first wash water of the next batch. If a contaminant was present in the previous
batch it would be there for the next.
2. On each of the two occassions in which the whispy sediment
appeared, I had let the final wash BD sit in the wash tank for almost a week
before draining and drying it. If something was there tha t"liked it" it
had some time to multiply.
3. The harsh alkali of unwashed BD might very well discourage
subsequent growth of contaminants from a previous wash, but I had just taken to
adding a small amount of phosphoric acid to the first wash to help wash soaps
out and to thereby reduce the number of washes from four to three. A contaminant
might now find the environment of the first wash to be less hostile.
I rather like the idea of it being a microbe. I
think I know how to deal with it. Stop using garden tools to stir the mix
(kidding). Approach a reasonable level of cleanliness in making and storing BD.
I also like the idea of the fuel being biodegradable, and not by some exotic
thermophile, but by common soil and water organisms.
Thanks for your time and thoughts,
Tom
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