Thermax's T-45 BD Macroporous Biodiesel Purification Ion Exchange Resin

Why Use Thermax's T-45 BD Macroporous Resin?

T-45 BD Macroporous Resin
Clearly the difference is in the -
HOLES

Arbor Biofuels Company puts it this way: the ability of a
resin to remove impurities works on the principle of ion
exchange (or in laymen's terms: atom replacement). Using
water purification as an example, this atom replacement
benefits water purity because usually the atom(s) used to
replace the unwanted atom (or contamination) is Hydrogen
(or Hydroxide).

Simply put, when water is contaminated with some mineral
which makes the water taste funny --let’s say Sodium, the
Sodium is then plucked out of the water stream by the resin
and replaced by a Hydrogen atom. This free hydrogen will
immediately bond with other molecules most likely
producing water; and magically the Sodium is replaced with
essentially more water...

A large surface area is imperative to this process because,
in order for this to work effectively, the bead has to "hold"
millions of hydrogen atoms ready to be donated for the
cause. Therefore, the total surface area of the bead has to
be covered in "dangling" hydrogen: hydrogen atoms that are
loosely bonded chemically to the surface area of the ion
exchange resin bead.

Chemists figured out the best way to increase the surface
area of the bead was to make it "permeable" so that each
bead not only had the external spherical surface area, it
now had an immense internal surface area of its
thousands of micro-channels. These micro-channels were
also coated with the appropriate dangling atoms ready to
purify even more water per bead.

For the purpose of biodiesel purification, the beads are
typically coated with hydrogen. When these are formulated
and manufactured, they are soaked in a high concentration
of sulfuric acid. A portion of the sulfuric acid's molecule
actually starts bonding to the exposed surface area of the
bead. These bonded molecules provide millions of
dangling Hydrogen atoms. After draining off the acid and
drying the resin beads, the beads are now activated and
you have a charged ion exchange resin.

Micro-Channels
This brings us to the "micro-channels". Being that these micro pathways are relatively tiny as
compared to the size of liquid molecules; water can flow into them whereas oils cannot.
Therefore water can penetrate a gel-bead through these micro-channels and oils like vegetable
oil and Biodiesel (long chain hydrocarbons) can't. What this means is water, which is a good
solvent of impurities, can transport these impurities to the total available activated surface area
inside the bead and take full advantage of the bead's immense ion exchange properties.
Therefore the water comes out perfectly clean on the other side and biodiesel doesn’t.

That is until Macro-Channel (or Macroporous) resin was invented! These resin beads have
actual pores and these pores are so large that now even large hydrocarbon chain molecules
can penetrate to the beads inner surfaces thus making them ideal for not only water purification
but oil purification (and in our case Biodiesel)!

So there you have the first reason why the Thermax' Tulsion T-45 BD Macro works more
effectively on Biodiesel: because it is not water, which gel resins were originally designed for,
rather Biodiesel is a long branch chained Hydro-Carbon...

We have worked it out with Thermax and their distribution warehouse to make available:
FREE ONE-LITER SAMPLES.

Part 2 of Our Secret and Why this T-45 BD Macro Dry Wash Resin is superior
In Part 1 I referred to one of the differences between gel-type resins and macroporous resins as
micro-channels vs. macro-channels. When the experts from Thermax performed a peer check
of my material, they were quick to point out that technically this statement is inaccurate since
gel resins in the business are referred to as "non-porous".

Gel resin more accurately in our particular application have a surface (as can be easily seen in
the posted electron microscopic photos provided by Sun Break Biofuels) which could be
described as non-porous semi-permeable since they allow methanol and water to be
adsorbed but not biodiesel.

It is the methanol still in the biodiesel or in the gel-resin beads that actually allows for the
internal ion exchange sites to be accessed.

In actual molecular action or movement the thin layer of unpurified biodiesel which coats the
surface of the bead is called an interstitial layer and a transfer of impurities occurs between this
interstitial coating and the fluid in the gel-type beads.

Therefore it is for this reason that I believe the macroporous resin is superior since the
macroporous bead doesn't fully rely on this methanol agent for ion exchange since due to the
macro-channels - the long chain hydrocarbons can deliver the impurities themselves to the
interior portion of the bead.

Additionally as the gel bead adsorbs glycerin it displaces methanol in that area of the bead
rendingit unavailable for continued ion exchange where as the macroporous bead actually
utilizes theadsorbed glycerin to entrap soaps transported directly by the long chain
hydrocarbons.

Incidentally this is the key to why we don't use the sodium form macroporous resin sold by
Lewatit (GF202) because initially it is unable to remove soaps since it has NO hydrogen (H+)
ions to exchange with the soap impurities and relies totally on glycerin entrappment for soap
removal. So initially these resin beds pass soaps and then by the time the resin bed has
adsorbed enough glycerin to be effective at removing soap, it doesn't have much life left. This is
because it only has 60% of the swelling or expansion capability of the gel-type beads.

So in conclusion; the Thermax T-45 BD Macro utilizes the best characteristics of both of
these resin:

1) It can operate at much lower levels of methanol content since the bead itself can be
penetrated by the biodiesel molecule. This allows the producer to remove more methanol prior
to the resin bed(s).

This subsequently reduces the impurity concentration in the biodiesel to the levels necessary
for the economic use of ion exchange for purification (dry washing).

2) Initially it removes soap through a true ion exchange process and then later as adsorbed
glycerin loads the resin bed, soap contamination continues to be removed by entrapment or
engulfment.

3) Since more methanol can be removed reducing initial concentrations of soap, this limits the
formation of FFA's from soap molecules created by the ion exchange process. This helps
ensure ASTM acid numbers are met.