TDI Bio

My rig for filtering oil seems to be working pretty well, except that it's manual and only does 4.5 gallons at a time. Basically, it's a 30 micron sock filter (known to you and me as a blue jean leg sown shut on the bottom), inside a 6" PVC pipe, with 10 pounds of rock salt below the filter, providing 6" of salt drip. At the bottom of the pipe is a 6-to-4 and 4-to-2 bushing, with a 2" male fitting. Screwed onto the maile fitting is a 2" end cap with several holes drilled in it, and a shower drain cover trimmed so that the mesh is inside the end cap. I drilled a 2½" hole in a sheet of plywood, and the pipe sticks down inside a 5 gallon drum. I'm able to use a 3qt. pot to dip oil out of my drum and fill the pipe, and it takes about 30 minutes to drain. The final sludge in the bottom of my 10 gallon barrels is poured through a cone filter that gets most of the nasty breading and bits. I had to use the plywood, as I quickly found out that the lid of a 5' gallon plastic bucket cannot support 20-30 pounds (two lids later). As I indicated before, the only pain is that my filtering rig is full manual at this point, and that it only filters 4.5 gallons at a time, max. The reason for this is that I don't want to lift 80-90 pound mini-drums over my head on a step ladder to filter directly into a drum. So, I scoop out the oil into the filter on top of a 5-gallon bucket, and guestimate how many times I can fill my filter without overflowing. This should get easier once I get a pump or compressor to move the oil, then I can skip the bucket phase. The salt seems to be giving a nice separation of the water, time will tell.