I'm far from an expert. Actually i'm still quite the newbie, but I have "gotten my feet wet." That would be something wouldn't it. Biodiesel advice at a shaving forum. :ashamed001 Course I guess with this thread, we already have that
I'm no expert either, I built an all plastic reactor (built from large HDPE buckets) with fitted heating elements. I had to build it myself since the water boilers featured in the "applseed" reactors isn't available here It was a small 20 litre reactor and I used it for one batch, loads of manual steps. I'm thinking of building a new one with pumps and better plumbing... I can recomend Biodiesel: Basics and Beyond by William H Kemp, it is a comprehensive book on Biodiesel theory and how to build a reactor (including methanol recovery!).
I'd ship you one, but i'm betting the shipping isn't worth it. A steel drum will work for a nice fill in, if you haven't thought of it. The pumps are where it got expensive for me. My unit runs two, one main, and a seperate for methoxide mix/injection. I'll check out the book, i'm still quite a newb.
Please don't make soap with it! You will never know exactly what is in the mix of these oils. As most of these oils were used for frying at high temps, they are oxidized and already breaking down. You simply cannot make soap from glycerin and lye. There has to be some fatty acids in there somewhere. This soapmaking process is uncontrolled and could end up producing something which is highly caustic - or just a lot of grease. Is all the methanol/ethanol flashed off before using the glyceride layer? How do you know how much the soap is superfatted? Every oil has a SAP value and they can vary. Since you are using used oils, how do you know how much of each oil do you have in there? You would need to do some lab testing to figure out the exact fatty acid content and calculate how much lye you need. How would you list EVERY single ingredient that went into producing it? I've seen bio diesel soaps and I'm not impressed. The glycerol from the home brewer's reaction will not be of the proper purity for sale as a raw material for soap or cosmetics.
Actually, glycerine and glycerol are chemically synonymous. Glycerol is a more accepted name, while glycerine is the traditional pharmaceutical name. Mixed distillation is quite a bit more complex than that. Each will affect the boiling point of the other, and they'll codistill to some degree. This is why some substances processed by distillation are "triple distilled". Although, as the 290C BP of glycerol is comfortably far from the 64.7C BP of methanol, one should be able to monitor the temperature of the boiling glycerol, and as soon as it hits 290C, one could know all the methanol (and water, incidentally) is gone. The distillate will be a mixture of glycerol, methanol, and any water that was present, and need further steps if one wanted to recover the methanol in any pure form.
