Pumps meet biofuel demands
A
Michael Smith Engineers product story
Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team
Aug 9, 2007
Michael Smith Engineers has a great deal of experience supplying pumps for biofuel producers.
Michael Smith Engineers offers a wide range of suitable pumps and first-hand experience in the biodiesel market, having supplied a number of biodiesel manufacturers with pumps.
Many of the pumps it has supplied for biodiesel applications are of a sealless design, essentially due to the requirements for leak-free pumping by their customers.
It has also supplied lower cost, mechanically sealed pumps to some small scale producers with less stringent requirements.
Biodiesel production involves mixing vegetable oil with methanol and a catalyst (for example, sodium methoxide) together with sulphuric acid, for pH correction, and a transesterification reaction to produce biodiesel and glycerine as a commercially viable bi-product.
On 'packaged type' plants many of the pumping duties involve the combination of low flow and relatively high-pressures.
Gear pumps such as the Liquiflo range, have proven to be ideal for these applications.
For transferring larger flows at lower pressures, centrifugal pumps, such as the Dickow KM series, have been preferred.
Dickow pumps have proven effective in pumping vegetable oils, methanol, crude and refined biodiesel and hot bottoms liquor.
Diaphragm dosing pumps have been supplied for accurate metering of sodium methoxide and sulphuric acid for pH correction.
The off-skid feedstock pumps, used for duties such as tanker loading and unloading, usually operate on much higher flows at relatively low-pressures.
Dickow pumps have proven successful as sealless leak-free pumps for these duties, handling methanol, refined and unrefined oil, biodiesel, glycerine and water.
Smaller, lower cost biofuels process installations have been supplied with Thompson KC series pumps in PVDF to ensure ATEX certification and these have successfully transferred vegetable oil, methanol and biodiesel at relatively low-pressures and low flows.
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Contact Michael Smith Engineers
Tel +44 1483 771871
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