Biodiesel Plant Design Build
We never set out to build biodiesel plants for others, but it turned out to be something we do a lot of. We have designed a lot of reactors over the past five years. First one was a blender. Next one made a ten gallon batch. The one after that blew up–but we don’t talk about it very often. And we have made or modified probably a half dozen others just for our own purposes.
Apart from biodiesel reactors and plants for our own purposes, we have been designing and building plants for others. The first one we sold was to NC State University for their Alternative Fuels Garage. Then we built one for the Zoo, then one for a guy who had a kiln-dried lumber operation, then one for a farm in Virginia, then one for a brewery with a fleet of beer trucks. We even built a biodiesel plant for a palm oil plantation in Dominican Republic.
Nowadays we are busy building or designing “farm scale” or “fleet scale” plants, some of which go up to a million gallons per year.
We’ve done some work on small scale continuous flow, which seems highly scalable, and we’ve become experts with ion exchange. It’s weird. Even big commercial bioidesel plants contact us for help on that front.
The combination of our onsite lab, our many years of practical battles in the field and the construction of our own facility have led us to have an R+D arm, along with a Design Build division. We are happy to sell you a biodiesel plant for your own project–almost anyone in the Control Room can get you started, but the conversation will most likely lead to David.
Below are some photographs and diagrams of turn-key processing systems we have built over the years. This is by no means complete. Since we didn’t know we would be building plants for others, we never really kept a good photographic record–but here are some photos and drawings that might be of interest. If any of it helps you with your project, please help yourself immediately.
We’ve recently added Tim and a Computer Aided Design station to our Design Build group–which means we have started kicking out remarkable work. Here’s one that just came off the line: dry-tank.pdf
Mobile Processor for N.C. Zoo in Asheboro.
Mobile Processor for U.N.C. at Pembroke.
420-gallon Batch Reactor for Triad Biofuels. (Using Waterless Wash)
Piedmont Biofuels Co-op Pilot Plant in Moncure
nc zoo processor | wash tank for nc zoo | mothership | alien baby
If you would like pricing on some of our systems, check out this page.
When we started building reactors, a few years ago, we went out on the net and scoured all the home brewing sites we could find. That taught us a lot, but at the time there were scores of poorly composed digital photographs from which we could only see buckets and rags and we were unable to discern inputs from outputs. That’s why we resorted to hand drawings. We are hoping that what we lack in artistic prowess we make up for with information.
NC Zoo Processor
The reactor vessel is a double jacketed stainless device that kicks out thirty gallon batches of fuel. It was fished out of the scrap yard by one of our members, and he was kind enough to sell it to us for the Zoo. In its past life it was used to culture vaccines.
These units pass through our region from time to time, based on our preponderance of pharmaceutical firms. For a photographic look at a smaller unit, check out the one we built for the Department of Energy.
One expensive aspect of re-using these units is the “sanitary” fittings that are required to plug holes. The beauty of them is that you can drop everything from a plug to a gauge to a thermal well into one of these with ease. The fittings are simple, but expensive.
The “mixology” on this unit is based on the sheer at the pump, and what makes it truly eye-popping and unique is the nice big “port hole” on the top of the unit, where you can look in and see the latte colored reaction going on. With enough heat, this unit will do methanol recovery, which is important not only to demonstrate, but to our highly ecologically minded customer—the North Carolina Zoological Park.
Wash Tank
This wash tank drawing is typical of the tanks we use. Washing is one of the places where you can get away with HDPE plastic in the biodiesel process. Not shown in the drawing is a bubble stone at the bottom of the tank. Forcing air through a bubble stone at the bottom of the tank is a handy way to wash and dry fuel. Water is heavier than biodiesel, so that water that is misted in through the top of the tank will fall to the bottom. If it can pick up a bubble, it will be carried back to the surface where it will gently fall back through the fuel again.
Mother Ship
Not shown in this drawing is a wall between the methoxide mixer (which lives under roof on the back porch) and The Mother Ship, which resides inside our homebrew plant. Water is not your friend when making biodiesel, so keeping the methoxide maker out of the elements is a wise idea. Having it outdoors, however, allows fumes to escape to the atmosphere rather than accumulate inside. Note the air powered pump on the methoxide maker. Compressed air powered pumps are spark free, which contributes to the safety of this design.
The “mixology” in this design occurs in the static mixer, in which our indoor pump forces veggie and methoxide into a “tortuous intimacy” to facilitate the biodiesel reaction.
This unit does not have a proud history of fuel making, and has been beset with problems. The main problem is that we pressure tested everything with cold water prior to installation, and while it was leak free while cold, leaks presented themselves when we added heat, and we have been chasing leaks around ever since.
The sight tube on this unit was never designed to hold pressure, which means it leaks unreacted biodiesel if the sight tube’s valves are accidentally left on during operation—which is easy to do in the presence of volunteer fuel makers.
Something we learned about the installation of the Mother Ship is that you should not disconnect a working reactor while moving to the new model, if at all possible. Like computer systems in large companies, it is best to run both reactors in parallel for a time, while the bugs are worked out of the new system.
Alien Baby
One night, when one of our members was working late, this reactor started speaking. At least that’s the story on how it got its name. As far as we know that coop member has been abducted and is far removed from fuel making by now.
This unit was plastic—which is not the best choice for making biodiesel. Dissimilar types of plastic are commonly found at the bulkhead fitting, and leaks can evolve. Plastic does not get along well with heat which is needed for a more complete biodiesel reaction. Alien Baby retired after the coop decided to build a larger processor ( The Mothership).
Some days we miss ole’ Alien Baby which served us well and kicked out a bunch of fuel. It had a limited batch size, of about 70 gallons, and plastic is a severe limitation, but we ran it for a long time, and it fueled many a member’s vehicle.
We liberated the TEFC pump and static mixer from it and included them in the Mother Ship. It’s primary vessel now sits sadly beside the Princess Palace out at the coop, as a grim reminder of higher volume days gone by.
Parts List
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