After a lengthy debate with friends regarding pumps and which would be most appropriate for pushing waste vegetable oil through tiny filters, I finally decided on a course of action. Browsing the internet late at night I stumbled across a picture of a set-up where a power steering pump was being used to filter oil through a centrifuge filter.
As far as I know centrifuge filters are barrels with a funnel on the bottom. Waste oil is pushed against the wall at high pressure and particles in the stream fall towards the bottom while clean oil is collected higher up on the wall of the apparatus. That's my current best guess on this type of filter. I'll do some more research about them when I've got my current filter set-up sorted out.
At any rate, the thought of using a power steering pump as a cheap (12$) substitute for some of the hydraulic pumps I'd seen for sale piqued my interest and with Matt's encouragement we were off to Pulpo Pull a Part to fetch one. We ended up settling on the pump out of a Chevy S-10, but a Volvo across the isle yielded an almost identical model. After getting the pump home and collecting an electric motor along the way, I was ready to begin construction. Set up was easy and I was able to use scrap plywood to mount both the pump and motor. Measuring the pulley on the pump and motor gave me a ratio of roughly 10:6 yielding a pump rotation of 1800 rpm (motor was rated at 3600 rpm or some such). The immediate problem was that the pump cavitated badly, greatly reducing flow, and making quite a bit of noise. Filling the pump reservoir did little to solve the problem, as it would drain immediately after being turned on. Matt suggested I use the pump reservoir as the intake, and after a few hacks and tweaks, I was able to make good on his suggestion. The newly configured set-up allowed the pump to operate without cavitation and I was ecstatic, until the bottom of the water filter I was using exploded from the pressure.
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