Drywash Towers

These are my pride an joy. I got the flanges from Ian Turner and made the rest myself. They are 12″ diameter by 7′ in height and the entire apparatus folds for cleaning and loading. The pump is a 200L per hour Brann Lubbe metering pump with a VFD for the 3phase. An awesome piece I got off eBay.20110906-064555.jpg

Since they weigh 1500lbs loaded I needed something pretty robust to fold them over and the come-along was about as simple and effective as you can get. It also has wheels of course to get it around to the cleanout area.

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The proud father.

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Was quite the night I checked all the dimensions and assembled it for a look see.

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Now heres something a bit new. I was really dreading filling these things with any of the available medias from Amberlite to eco2pure due to the cost. I found a fascinating PhD thesis document on the University of Idaho website done by a grad student Jacob Wall, a student of J. Van Gerpen. It went through all the various nuances of both ion exchange medias as well as filtering medias. The filtering media is along the lines of eco2pure and others, wood chips that grab the large glycerin molecule by hooking it so to speak. Well in the middle of all my research my lovely wife to be “asked” me to go feed her horses and being the dutiful guy in waiting I jumped up and off I went…well…sort of…anyway I went out to the feed buckets and dug in. when I dug in I noticed several interesting properties about the feed…its VERY fibrous, VERY dry and after some research I even determined it has been penned as a potential feedstock. Well…what I am talking about is Beet-Root Pulp…shredded to be exact and it is the byproduct of the Sugar beet industry. It is the cake essentially from the extraction of sugar alcohols in the Beet. Well I researched it quite thoroughly and made my own determination that it could indeed work quite well…and its $13.00 for 50lbs at my local Osborne family Agway. All I can say is damn what a great find…:)

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