Looking for a centrifuge to clean my oil from the cold press that I can afford?

Question

Hello,,

My name is Daniel McAmoil,, I am a farmer who is making my own bio diesel fuel from sunflowers. The issue I'm dealing with at this time is the fine mud I get from crushing sunflowers with my cold press. Its a real pain to filter as bag filters plug with just a few gallons unless one lets the oil settle for a week or longer.

From my reading off the net I see there are self cleaning units on the market,, but all I have found are way more than I need for size, and cleaning ability's and costs.

The specs I'm looking at would be 20 to 25 gallon an hour..

Would like to clean the oil up to 3 to 5 microns

I'm dealing with about 2% to 5% solids.

Would like a self cleaning unit so it could catch the oil right from my cold press and them pump clean oil into storage tanks.

Thanks for your time

Daniel McAmoil

Penokee,Kansas

USA

[e-mail]

www.oilcrusher.5u.com

Answer 1

Have you considered a stepped filtering process? Similar to Reverse Osmosis water filtration....you could pump the oil through a 20 micron filter, then a 10, then a 5...if you had an ideal pump that could keep steady pressure I think that would be fine. I don't know much about filtering with a centrifuge but it sounds complicated and expensive. I'm assuming simple particulate filters from an industrial supply company could fit my method of stepped filtering above, a supply tank, pressure pump, lines and a storage tank for the filtered oil should be all you need.

Also, maybe check out FS2000, it's a bypass filter for diesel and it filters down to a very low micron, it's relatively expensive but it just might work.

Good luck, sounds like a cool project.

Answer 2

Cuno makes a brand of filter called Auto-Klean which is not centrifugal but has no replaceable filter element, it filters between metal discs, and there's a handle outside the filter that you can turn 1/4 turn to clear the filter.   It can also be disassembled without messing with the piping to it.