WVO Progress... Settling Tank

Hey everyone! Now that I'm out of school I'm getting back to rebuilding my Waste Vegetable Oil system (that for many reasons has sat dormant during this past semester). Today I worked on building a much higher tech version of the settling tank than what I had before. Here are some shots of today's work:

Here is the settling tank. As you can see, I have wrapped the lower half of this tank with heating wire. This heating wire is designed to warm up the vegetable oil, consequently lowering the viscosity of the oil and accelerating the settling process. During the settling process large contaminants and some moisture separate from the oil. As you can see, the spout that I have coming out of the side of the tank is some distance from the bottom. This allows the large contaminants (French fries, peanuts, cabbage, etc...) to collect at the bottom of the tank without clogging the filters during the filtration stage.

Here is some heating wire set into groves that I have cut into a piece of 3/4" foam board insulation. This is what the tank sits on, consequently heating and insulating the bottom of the tank.

Here is where I finished up today. As you can see I have insulated the outside of the barrel, as well as built the mounting plate for the pump which is also in the picture.

The next step will be mounting the filters and connecting all the PVC. Then this setup will be ready to roll! :)

I am going to try and continue updating this blog with my progress as I completely rebuild my WVO setup. Also, stay tuned and hopefully when I re-install the conversion on my truck, I will be able to put up a step by step video! :D We'll see.