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+--- Thread: Freeze seperate water wvo (/showthread.php?tid=2908)
Freeze seperate water wvo - larsalan - 08-27-2011
So if you have a barrel of wvo and it gets to be very freezing what happens to the water/ice?
Does oil float on ice? Does water seperate well at cold temps?
I might be able to stock a few hundred gallons and let the settle/seperate in my shed all winter.
It would be awesome if a block of ice formed in the bottom of the barrel to keep the oil and water apart.
RE: Freeze seperate water wvo - larsalan - 08-27-2011
Oh I guess water on bottom, oil in middle, ice on top.
http://www.kidzpark.com/play-activities/Temperature-and-Density-Freezing-oil-and-water/351/
RE: Freeze seperate water wvo - Greazzer - 08-27-2011
Burning grease now on my 4th year. From my experience, leaving WVO outside for long periods only lets it settles where junk will settle to the bottom, but the only way to get the super-micron particles of water out of it (and other junk) is to heat it up and to run it thru a centrifuge. There is no comparision to any other method from all of my trials and tribulations. I am not suggesting that the science project results are wrong, but for larger amounts per batch, e.g., 25 gallons or more, freezing it will probably not work. I have let WVO sit and settle for 6-9 months, and that is starting out with really good WVO. Unless you have a really good method of draining off the water, trying to seperate WVO from water is very frustrating, and adding "cold' will make your WVO like thick syrup. Heat is really your best friend because leaving it out in a black barrel where it collects heat will speed up the settling process and if you can get it to at least 130F+, you will start to "cook" off the fine water that is somehow suspended. Yes, I understand that water and oil don't mix and they will rapidly seperate, even when you intentionally mix the two. However, even when the process occurs, there is super-micron particles of water which is part of the reason why WVO looks cloudy. Running WVO thru a centrifuge at 180F for a few hours and you can read through it, impeccably clear. Run it overnight, and you start going from very light brown to amber. Even the centrifuge after an overnight will still pick up "stuff" and you will never have any water. If you want to get really picky, centrifuge your WVO, let it cool to about 90-100F, and mix it with water, about 50-50% and mix that for about 5 minutes and let that settle. Drain off the water and the water will NOT be clear. Do that a few times, and then run the WVO thru the centrifuge. The not-clear water is the dissolved solids that are sub-micron that even escape the centrifuge. After some trial and error, and trying 1 micron nominal bags, filters, et cet., the centrifuge beats them all. Altough it may take 16+ hours to really clean WVO, you are probably only investing about 1 hour of actual hands on time. I can go almost an entire year now without changing my fuel filters and I only change them because I remember the good old days where they clogged every 1500-2000 miles. Hope this helps. So, yes, I would rather swap about one hour of my time for about $100 worth of fuel.