Do It Yourself
"While it is our right to have clean fuels in our automobiles and clean energy in our homes, it is our responsibility to make these technologies a reality."
Joshua Tickell, From the Fryer to the Fuel Tank
In a nutshell, we agree. And in a nutshell, this has been our motivation. And while we are working to make Biodiesel a viable alternative fuel on our own campus, we also want to share all of the lessons that we have learned along the way. So for those of you also ready to turn Biodiesel from an idea into a reality, we have created this D.I.Y. section of our website. We hope that it'll help make your own greasy journey more smooth!
*Check back for updates! We are working first to answer the questions that we are most frequently asked! If you'd like information or advice on a specific topic, please send us an email and we'll get working on it! We'd also appreciate your feedback so we can continually improve this section! And we invite you to contribute your own insights from your own experiences to this site!
All About Oil
Download .pdf format
What to look for in an oil source (quality assessment)
Oil quantities and current collection schemes
Methods for collecting waste-oil
Words to the wise: tips for talking to restaurants
Fuel Quality
Download .pdf format
Testing fuel quality
Ensuring fuel quality
The VBI System ...back to top
VBI has the goal of being an educational tool, and as such we are hoping to publish the trickier and most unique parts of the design of our biodiesel system here, with the hopes that others can learn from our work and numerous mistakes.
To start we will be putting up the design of our condenser, a system we find quite useful:
Motivation: Due to air quality regulations our system was subject to we needed to build a completely closed system - no venting of methanol or waste-water disposal of glycerol! Thus we built this condenser system to extract the methanol from the glycerol output of the system. We also extract methanol from the biodiesel output in the main tank. We estimate that we recover 2.5-3.5gal of very pure (about 99%) methanol from the outputs per batch and that 75% of this methanol comes out of the glycerol. We reuse this methanol in subsequent reactions and avoid putting a VOC into the atmosphere.
Method: This is a fairly cheap and simple system with only a few tricky aspects. The first trick was estimating how long to make the condenser coil: we used two 10ft sections. However, we have since determined that a single section would be enough. The copper tubing we used is 1/2 inch outer diameter (OD) and 3/8 in. inner diameter (ID). The tubing cost about $35 for 10 ft. The next main trick is insulating the CPVC tubing and reducing the length it has to run to reach the condenser as much as possible. This will reduce the amount the methanol cools in the line and make it easier to condense out. The last tricky part was the bulkhead fittings (Connection Type #1 and #2), which work best with a flat sided water jacket (this can be anything - we used a plastic trash can). These connections are detailed below.
Condenser Diagrams
If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask.
