TDI Bio

I purchased some misting components over the past few days, and finally assembled them today to see if it would mist well. The basic components are:

• Small submersible pump from Harbor Freight - $9
• 1/2" tubing from Harbor Freight - $4
• Misting plugs from Lowes (plumbing) - $3
• Mist plug insertion tool from Lowes (plumbing) - $3

I was pleased to find the mist components at Lowes, because I'd been searching for them for some time... the Arizona misters features on many biodiesel blogs and websites are very hard to find, and I wasn't about to pay $25 for it, plus shipping, to order through the mail.

All I basically had to do for assembly was to use the insertion tool to make holes in the tubing, then push the plugs in until they were barely into the hole, then twist them in so that the threads would help hold them in. For the prototype, I created a tube coming 3' up from the pump, to simulate the height from the bottom to the top of a 55-gallon drum, then a 20" diameter loop, which will run around the perimeter of the drum head.

Emily, my daughter, is modeling the final assembly, though I couldn't get her to hold it while it was running. :-) It worked like a champ, with a fine mist.



The benefit of this approach over the Arizona system hooked to a garden hose is:

1. It's a closed loop system, so I can mist overnight, and not worry about having added too much water to my batch. With the garden hose system, you have to worry about how many gallons you're adding.
2. As a closed loop system, I'm not pumping water through my main processor pump, so it helps keep water away from the H2O sensitive methanol reaction.
3. The price was cheap.