Make Your Own Synthetic Oil

Use the following instructions to make your own synthetic oil.

Steps

  1. Build a small hopper leading down into a 2" pipe mounted sideways. This accepts input from a shredder.
  2. Put an auger with a 15-degree incline through this 2" pipe. This will ferry biomass to the conical pyrolyzer. Drive motor should be variable speed and 2-3 HP. 3/4 RPM = 1 kilogram every 15 minutes.
  3. Feed the pipe into a metal cone with a 1" outlet at the bottom. This goes directly to the next horizontal 2" pipe that is being used for a gasifier.
  4. Put in the steam line at the end of the gasifier near the pyrolyzer with a variable output nozzle. At the other end of the gasifier should be a 200-mesh screen and a 2" T-section down to the ash dump (6" of pipe) and then 1/2" to the gas filtration.
  5. Run the raw gas through some lime as per the first article, along with the usual half of gas output going to heat the gasifier from the outside. Use a barbeque gas regulator for that.
  6. Make F-T reactor elements. They are 2" outside and 1" inside pipe with cooling water through the center pipe and the syngas going through the outside pipe. Between the two catalyst retention screens (200 mesh) is 72" of cobalt catalyst. This catalyst has the following recipe by mass: 200 kg diatomaceous earth, 100 kg cobalt, 10 kg magnesium oxide. It's the original Fischer-Tropsch recipe minus the thorium oxide.
  7. Activate the catalyst by running some syngas through it at {{safesubst:#invoke:convert|convert}} for 5 hours. This is best accomplished by putting it in a pipe and heating it from the outside with burning gas.
  8. Run the cooling water to a radiator as per the previous project. Truck radiators are almost perfect for this seeing as the reaction runs at {{safesubst:#invoke:convert|convert}}. If there were an automotive thermostat for this temperature (428 F) it would do good in the line to the radiator.
  9. Build an oil filtration chamber using a 1.8 Angstrom (.0018 micron) membrane filter to separate oil from water.

Warnings

  • No smoking!

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