dry out oil

Try dropping a live lobster into a Frialator. I did it quite by accident while taking a shortcut to the lobster cooker at my high school summer job. Three lobsters in each hand, and the one on top flipped it's tail at just the right instant.

But I have boiled water mixed with waste oil in order to reduce its volume before disposal. Using a 5 gallon metal paint bucket on a Coleman stove away from other combustibles, and a bit of patience, I don't recall any excitement.

Reply to
Ned Simmons
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Predominently water with a bit of oil is not a problem.. The other way definitely CAN be.

Reply to
clare

Weren't you tempted to do a bit of tempura?

Reply to
Tom Gardner

You can dry oil contaminated with water by heating it to about

90C/190F for several hours.

I have done this on a large scale ( about 80,000 litres at a time) at my employers. I was Technical Superintendent of a lubricating oil manufacturing plant and after about 20 years the steam heating coils in the blending tanks fractured, releasing steam which condensed into water and emulsion as the oil was only heated to 60C.

We simply transferred the oil to a sound tank, heated to 90C until the oil was dry. The test for water is called a "crackle test", simply put about 10 ml of oil in a test tube and heat with a bunsen burner or electric heater. If you hear popping sounds, the oil is still wet, continue drying until there is no popping.

If you have a reasonably heavy gauge 60 litre steel drum with one or two bungs, fill it no more than about 2/3 full, then you can heat it safely until it is dry, the oil will not overflow and the water will evaporate through the bungs. Do not close the bungs. Do not use an open topped grease pail unless it is 180 kg size and filled with a maximum of 50 litres. Open containers are dangerous. You can use a 20 litre drum filled to about 15 litres but they are a thinner gauge steel and you have to be more careful with the heating method.

I also have about 60 litres of damp transmission oil to dry from my tractor, will wait until the end of winter when the weather warms up a bit.

HTH

Alan, who has had a much better life since retiring in

1995. No more 5 am starts unless I WANT to go out at that horrible hour.
Reply to
alan200

I forgot to add that we blew dry compressed air through the wet oil to circulate it. I will use compressed air when I dry my oil.

Alan

Reply to
alan200

Real form oil is a mixture of the cheapest grade base oil and wool grease and stinks of sheep piss.

Alan

Reply to
alan200

I used to work at a place with forming presses that leaked. Part of the process used steam to relax the fiber in our moulding media, anyway, we ended up with a pit full of hydraulic oil, wood fiber, and water.

We would pump the mess out, run it though a reclaiming system that basically was a pump, filters, and a plate heated by plant steam that the oil flowed over that boiled off the water. Seemed to work okay fine for us.

Wes

Reply to
Wes

Glad to know its a fairly standard thing. I finished today. As the oil is up to $15 per gallon, I saved $300 for an hour's work. This will be SOP from now on. Water contamination in the tractor oil is common.

Karl

Reply to
Karl Townsend

15 dollars a gallon sounds very expensive. I buy aws 24 and AWS 46 for about 25 dollars for a five gallon pail.

John

Reply to
john

Is there a filter you can use to continuously clear water from the hydraulic oil onboard the tractor, Karl?

--Winston

Reply to
Winston

I installed a diesel fuel/water separator on my boss' tow truck a couple decades ago. Maybe one is available for hydraulic fluid.

-- Remember, in an emergency, dial 1911.

Reply to
Larry Jaques

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. How do those work? Does the water get trapped in the filter and you open a valve occasionally to let it out of the system?

--Winston

Reply to
Winston

The one I installed had a ~1 quart glass filter chamber with a radiator type drain valve on the bottom. You could see the water collect in the clear chamber and just opened the valve to release it. Fuel went into the chamber, water dropped out (immiscible), and a fine filter above it sent dry fuel to the engine. Similar to this

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I think his was about $100.

-- Remember, in an emergency, dial 1911.

Reply to
Larry Jaques

(...)

Cool! Thanks.

Sounds like the perfect thing to put at the bottom of the hydraulic system on Karl's tractor. Opening the valve every 100 miles has got to be less trouble than draining and heating the oil.

--Winston

Reply to
Winston

I "think" Goldenrod makes a filter that would do the job - but it would need to be on the return side of the system.

Another possibility is a separate circulating pump running "bypass" to filter/dry the oil continuously.

Reply to
clare

That is a Racor fuel filter and is intended for fuel. They are intended to trap free water in the fuel. The filter, located in the upper part of the housing is a particle filter and all water separation takes place in the lower section.

Usually used on diesel engines they work well for fuel as they do catch nearly all of the free water and any emulsified water can be injected with no problems. However for "milky oil" I doubt that they would work well as they won't separate emulsified water.

There are engine oil filters that incorporate a heater and are said to remove water, although how well they work I cannot comment.

Reply to
john B.

Wrong. Those are for diesel fuel, not hydraulic oil. I'm not sure what they use for mobile oil/water separators.

-- Remember, in an emergency, dial 1911.

Reply to
Larry Jaques

How about a reservoir with a low end and a petcock? Drain it every Monday morning, or after a couple days downtime. Simpler might be better. Also, a moisture filter on the vent is in order. That's probably where most of the water comes from.

-- Remember, in an emergency, dial 1911.

Reply to
Larry Jaques

Our church had flood water get into the elevator hyd oil. The elevator service co. replaced the oil and put a water filter unit on it for over

60 days. It did NOT remove enough water to talk about. It was a big unit with a motor,pump and (2 filters that cost us over $200.00 each). The oil still looks like milk and I can drain a 1/4 cup of pure water out of the bottom of the reservoir.
Reply to
Ralph

(...)

It makes one wonder if there is a way to coalesce (de-emulsify) that oil quickly and cheaply.

--Winston

Reply to
Winston

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