On the Road Episode #1

Posted on 10/07/10 26 Comments

WVO Designs goes out to Roberts Creek, British Columbia to meet up with Ross Muirhead.  Ross runs a small WVO co-op on the sunshine coast and gives us a tour of his collection and cleaning systems as well as a look under the hood of his Mercedes.

If you are having trouble viewing try on Vimeo or YouTube

25 Comments

  1. Graydon Blair says:
    Friday, October 15, 2010 at 11:34pm

    That was great to see! It’s so cool to see all the ingenuity that people have to put something like his oil coop together.

    Seeing the centrifuge “in the field” was awesome! I’m looking forward to seeing more!

    Reply

  2. Ward Lormand says:
    Thursday, October 21, 2010 at 5:29pm

    Great video! I really like my centrifuge,
    to date I have 110,000 miles on WVO. Keep up the good work. Let’s see more videos.

    Reply

  3. Bernth Alex says:
    Thursday, October 21, 2010 at 7:05pm

    I like to see more of this.

    Reply

  4. Bernth Alex says:
    Thursday, October 21, 2010 at 7:06pm

    I like to see more of this. first e-mail adress was wrong

    Reply

  5. Tom Hamlin says:
    Thursday, October 21, 2010 at 7:12pm

    Thanks Leon, Always great to see how the other guys are doing it.
    Looking forward to more.

    Reply

  6. Simone0414 says:
    Thursday, October 21, 2010 at 7:36pm

    I think this a great idea & look forward to viewing more.

    Very nice setup!!

    Reply

  7. Aaron Wall says:
    Thursday, October 21, 2010 at 8:10pm

    Awesome video! Keep ’em coming. I love seeing what other people are doing so that I can improve my own system.

    Reply

  8. Dennis says:
    Thursday, October 21, 2010 at 8:17pm

    Loved the video! More please. Seeing how others do things only improves the WVO community knowledge.

    Reply

  9. Frank says:
    Thursday, October 21, 2010 at 10:36pm

    Good job! Keep ’em coming!

    Reply

  10. Donald says:
    Friday, October 22, 2010 at 12:27am

    I have the centrifuge but have not had much success from it. I need to see a more detailed explanation of it. How does one know how fast to feed oil, which port is the out port for the cleaned oil and which is the wast?

    Reply

    • Big Vern says:
      Friday, October 22, 2010 at 2:27am

      Hey Donald

      The 2 ports on the bottom of the centrifuge body are the clean and waste ports. The clean oil comes out of the port furthest from the motor. The inner port is the waste water and fine particulate that is spun out. We gravity feed our RPC units within the same atmosphere and find with the 240V optional heater from WVO Designs we can flow reasonably settled oil with the feedstock valve (after the heater attached to the feed port on the top of the unit) about 3/4 open. Experiment. Our temps are around 165 degrees C. Run a sample of oil, fill a mason jar 3/4 full, and let it settle. With the RPC, we achieve a water content of 350 PPM which is quite a suprise considering it is a single pass (or spin) process. Good Luck and keep asking questions.

      Reply

  11. craig hall says:
    Friday, October 22, 2010 at 2:15am

    This is great a place to find others that are running vegetable oil as a fuel

    Thanks for doing this Leon

    Craig Hall
    Billings Montana

    Reply

  12. andrew neaville says:
    Friday, October 22, 2010 at 3:16am

    great video. Its great to see videos of other people’s set ups. Way easier than reading descriptions. can’t wait for more

    Reply

  13. deejaaa says:
    Friday, October 22, 2010 at 3:18am

    The video was great. Whoever did the editing needs to be commended. I really liked the music when he was walking into the restaurant. I was hoping to see a before and after use of the CF, a side by side clarity comparison in a small amount, such as a one liter jar. I hope you can keep the vids coming and I will stay subscribed to see them. Thanx Leon, you are very intuitive.

    Reply

    • Gabriel Forezli says:
      Saturday, October 23, 2010 at 9:28pm

      Thanks for the comments!

      I do the shooting and editing for these episodes and I’m glad everyone is enjoying them!

      Stay tunes, there is more to come!

      Reply

  14. Mike Amaral says:
    Friday, October 22, 2010 at 3:51pm

    Ross is a man after my own heart! I use WVO to run my 02 Ford F250 7.3L diesel and also for heating/domestic hot water in a building.

    I have a couple of questions for Ross.

    1. He didn’t describe whether or not he heats the oil at the input to the centrifuge. Does he run the centrifuge at room temperature?

    2. He described running the centrifuge unattended overnight for 1000L batches. Does he have a method for the centrifuge to shutdown automatically upon emptying the input tote, filling the output tote, or perhaps, whichever occurs first?

    Best regards,
    Mike

    Reply

    • Ross Muirhead says:
      Monday, November 22, 2010 at 5:10pm

      Mike:

      First patch ran with heater on during summer ambient temperatures and the flow was coming out ‘fast’ through the centrifuge which suggests that the oil is leaving the inner bowl faster than maybe it should be for a cleaner product. I think Gary’s comments addresses this issue as he seems to have examined the end product more closely, ie: oil quality run through without heater and with heater. Gary did you filter the two patches to compare? Have you completed the two pass system?

      It seem that when I had the heater on there was way more ‘waste’ oil coming out of the drain, vs another patch when the heater wasn’t on. 3rd patch I didn’t put the heater on, less waste oil coming out, so my intuition is that running without is slower processing time, however cleans the oil better.

      On the subject of running patches I make sure that the top 1,000L tote has 1/4 less volume in it, so when I leave the machine running overnight I can rest assured that the bottom tote doesn’t over fill. There is no auto shut-off, but letting the centrifuge run with no oil processing is not an issue. If Leon could set up a sensor of some type to switch off the machine when the oil has been processed that would be a nice feature.

      Reply

    • John Webster says:
      Monday, November 22, 2010 at 6:06pm

      Mike:

      I’ve run oil through my centriguge at room temp. It seems to work fine. Can you give me any info on using wvo in a oil fired hot water boiler. I haven’t run across a fool proof setup yet. I’m running two F-350s on centrifuged oil, and I get 10-12 months out of the big filter on my trucks. I have a Dino Design system. They went out of business, but system is great. Anyother info, just ask me.

      yt,

      John Webster, Maine

      Reply

  15. Otis says:
    Friday, October 22, 2010 at 4:15pm

    Very Nice – I enjoy seeing other peoples setups

    Reply

  16. Jim Lange says:
    Monday, October 25, 2010 at 2:45pm

    Very nice and informative enough for those of us who are already using WVO Designs. And I must agree that it is good to see others set-ups.

    Reply

  17. Gary says:
    Monday, October 25, 2010 at 7:15pm

    Great video. Please do more. I would like more “how to” style videos. Such as things that can go wrong, what to watch out for, etc. Like the previous comment I would like to know the temperature setting of the heating element. I’m finding the hotter the temperature the better the flow but you do sacrifice filtering quality. Running it with the heater off the solids are filtered out and there are fewer floating particles. I’m considering a two pass method. One pass cold and the second pass hot.

    Reply

  18. Tracy P says:
    Tuesday, November 9, 2010 at 9:58pm

    Great Leon. I like it. Please do more of these. I immagine I’d learn something from every one I could watch.

    Reply

  19. John Webster says:
    Monday, November 22, 2010 at 6:19pm

    When I centriguge oil, I regulate flow, so there is no oil coming out the overflow. Maybe I’m doing it wrong, but I’ve gotten very good results, time between truck filter changes. I can run a filter 10-12 months, w/o changing. I drive 40-50 thousand miles a year, on wvo. My experience shows the large white spiral discharge hose, like Ross was using, will get brittle and break over time. WVO is hard on gray plastic, and other types of plastic pipe. You need to be careful, or you’ll end up w/ a nice big mess. I have! lol I’ve learned by doing, the hard way. Most of my oil comes from restraunts, which have 4-5 fryelators. They change oil weekly in the winter, and twice weekly in the summer months. It is drained into the basement, into a 275 gallong oil tank. I suck the oil out every 6-8 weeks, and transfer it to a 275 gal. plastic tote, w/ the big gear pump. The big gear pump is very nice, but there is a trade off, between big volume pumps, and smaller pumps. The bigger pumps need bigger hoses, and bigger plastic hose is bulky. Overall I enjoy using wvo. Best part is driving past gas stations, and not stopping. lol

    yt,

    John Webster

    Reply

  20. Kevin Andrew McLean says:
    Monday, May 2, 2011 at 8:45pm

    Nice setup. Do you pre filter the wvo before putting into the first tank that feeds into the centrifuge? Or, can the centrifuge handle most anything short of chunks of food?

    How is the flow controlled?

    Reply

    • Ross Muirhead says:
      Friday, November 25, 2011 at 6:29pm

      Kevin: Yes I pre-filter the waste oil before sending it through the centrifuge. I pour the oil from the 16L containers I get from the restaurents into a pail that has a screen attached which removes the large particles. Then the oil is poured from the bucket, into a 1,000L tote that has a 200 micron filter bag attached. Then it gets pumped into the top stacked 1,000 tote for processing through the centrifuge. Before it gets pumped into a vehicle’s tank the oil passes through a 1 micron filter.

      Reply

One Trackback

  1. […] more simple than i am making it out but i was reading that heating before the* is a good deal.. On the Road Episode #1 ANy thing else i should be looking […]

Post a Comment

Your email is never published or shared. Required fields are marked *