Materials
One 7-gallon plastic bucket. You can find these at a homebrew supply store, where you can also get a valve that you will need to install as close to the bottom of the 7-gallon bucket as possible. The homebrew supply will have buckets with the valve already installed, but it is usually placed farther up on the bucket than you want for draining impurities. Also, the bucket must have a lid with a hole in it for the shaft of the mixer. The ones from the homebrew supply store have a hole in the center, but it is usually too large. Get a new lid and cut a small hole in it for the shaft of the mixer. The smaller the hole the better.
Electric drill. If you are very patient, you can stand there with the drill in your hand and mix the reactants, but you will probably want to fabricate something to hold the drill. There are some suggestions in the How-To Resources.
Paint stirrer that will fit in the drill.
A scale that can measure 0 to 100 grams in 0.1 gram increments.
A drill pump and a 5-micron diesel filter.
Five gallons of new or de-gummed vegetable oil.
One gallon of nearly pure methanol.
Sixty-six and one-half grams (2.34 ounces) sodium hydroxide.
Procedure
Have all the materials warm, room temperature at the coolest, 130°F at the warmest. Put on gloves, respirator, and goggles. In a well ventilated area place 1 gallon of methanol in the bucket. Measure out 66.5 grams of sodium hydroxide from a new container and place it in the methanol in the bucket.
Put the lid on the bucket and mix with the paint mixer for about five minutes. Remove the lid. What is in the bucket now is sodium methoxide. Avoid getting this on anything, especially yourself.
Measure out 5 gallons of new vegetable oil and pour it into the sodium methoxide in the bucket. Put the lid on (you may now take off the respirator, gloves, and goggles) and blend at low speed for one half hour.
Let the mixture settle in a well-ventilated area at room temperature for at least eight hours. What you have now is light-colored methyl esters (biodiesel) floating on top of heavier, darker glycerol. Using a small pump (a drill pump will work for this) pump the biodiesel through the diesel filter into another container for washing, being careful to get just the biodiesel layer into the wash container.
