Album: Oil Collection

     Album:Vegetable Oil Conversion:Oil Collection

WVO Collection. Ugh.

I have never completely found a good solution for this.

I find that oil generally comes in two ways, either in the 5 gallon carboys, or else in a dumpster, with 20-200 gallons. So you need a pump system as well as way of dealing with carboys. I used to dump the carboys into settling tanks and then pump from the tank to my drity tank. That doesn't work much when I'm on the road, so I gave it up. I came up with a better solution below.

As far as pumping large quantities into the tank, I haven't found a perfect solution. I first attempted an air pump, which was incredible when my air tanks were loaded up, or at least was incredible for the first 10 gallons or so, then I needed to wait for the air compressor to catch up. I was using the bus air tanks combined with a large air compressor, and it just wasn't enough.

After that I tried the normal solution of an electric pump. That was slow but steady, until it died in 2011, right after finding about 80 gallons of oil. Heartbreaking.

I think a trash pump is the way to go - and I bought a mini trash pump on ebay, but unfortunately it is very, very, very hard to prime, so I haven't really used it yet. Need to plumb it properly and prime it. Unfortunately it's also chinese made, so I doubt it'll last long.

My dirty collection pump,
as inspected by my cat. I buy an air powered pump. These things can pump about as much oil as you can supply them with air. The bus has an air compressor that does a whopping 15.5 cfm at idle. That means I can probably pull 15-20gpm at fast idle, maybe more. ( comments)
Oops. The dirty filter as mounted
is in the way of the dirty oil pump. ( comments)
The dirty filter
and pump, remounted so the dirty oil pump outlet can fit between. ( comments)
I make a trough
that can coarse filter and run oil into my tanks. ( comments)
So then I can easily dump
carboys directly into the dirty tank. ( comments)
The first run
(about 60 gallons) shows that I clearly need an easy way to replace the mesh (it's just screen door material, folded over a bunch). I should have just done one layer of screen, and then used it as a form to push multiple layers into which could then be taken out for cleaning. Learning. ( comments)
Powered by photo album generator a script written by David Madison on Thu Jan 28 03:53:13 2016