Separating oil and water.

Fullers Farmalls · Feb 23, 2011

I drained the hydraulic oil on my H and found it had water in it. this was over winter. Now i want to separate the old oil to reuse. What is the best procedure to get my old oil cleaned up. I have around 4 gallons and was wondering if it can be done at home and what is the best way. Thanks in advance. -Keith

sflem849 · Feb 23, 2011

A filter cart. You couldn't afford one for what a jug of hytran would cost.

Brian Schmidt · Feb 23, 2011

Best to toss it and put in new.

If you are set on saving it though, you could try heating it in a turkey cooker 3 or 4 gallons at a time to boil the water out. Just don"t burn it.

S2710 · Feb 23, 2011

I drained the 80-90 out of a M that had water in it I put it in 5 gallon buckets and let it seperate and when the water froze this winter I poured out the oil and threw the frozen hunk of Ice away.

Bob

DeltaRed · Feb 23, 2011

Put the bucket in the freezer,freeze the water,pour off the oil

IH fan · Feb 24, 2011

(quoted from post at 23:01:46 02/23/11) A filter cart. You couldn't afford one for what a jug of hytran would cost.

It takes special filters to take water out of oil and sflem849 is right, you can buy new oil cheaper than those filters. We had a cart set up with 18 Cuno filter elements to do just that, and each filter element would only hold a minimal amount of water. The water removal elements cost about 3 or 4 times a normal element.
Freezing it after the water is settled seems a logical idea.

holmesw · Feb 24, 2011

I would suggest putting in new oil. Even if you get the water out, Chances are the oil will still be in rough shape.

oldtanker · Feb 24, 2011

It's amazing what people will do to try to save a buck that can turn around and bite hard in the butt.

New oil is that, new, CLEAN, WATER FREE! At the cost of repairs and parts do you really want to try to save that oil?

Rick

WY JERRY · Feb 24, 2011

A nice used DeLaval lube oil purifier would work - possibly around $30,000? Just buy new oil!

sflem849 · Feb 24, 2011

Then again, the entire system is dirty from the water even after he drains it. I REALLY hope he didn't hook up to something and contaminate that, too.

mkirsch · Feb 24, 2011

You sure you don't mean rear end lube?

An H only holds about 6 quarts of hydraulic fluid, but it holds around 5 gallons of heavy gear lube in the rear end.

A 5 gallon bucket of gear lube is around $60 at Tractor Supply, less if you catch it on sale.

You can't even begin to touch any real water separation equipment for $60, and even if you could, you'd still have old oil that needs to be replaced.

Fullers Farmalls · Feb 24, 2011

I did buy new oil to put in over winter but didnt get it all out of the cylinders on my loader and more water got in that oil. So Before long im gonna drain it too and i was just looking to see if it was doable. Im not trying to ruin my tractor or anything. just i already had the oil and was wondering if it could be reused.

sflem849 · Feb 24, 2011

(quoted from post at 13:14:37 02/24/11) I did buy new oil to put in over winter but didnt get it all out of the cylinders on my loader and more water got in that oil. So Before long im gonna drain it too and i was just looking to see if it was doable. Im not trying to ruin my tractor or anything. just i already had the oil and was wondering if it could be reused.

Makes sense, but there is so much emulsified oil that it is nearly impossible to get it out without a filter.
I have heard of cooking hytran off in a turkey fryer type setup. I don't think it would ever separate out to take the chunk of ice out. I would cook it in a fryer, but ultimately it will need new oil. It will take a couple changes with cycling of the hydraulics to make it clean(er).
Can you run them and get them hot to cook out the water like in an engine?

muleboss · Feb 24, 2011

If you had to ask- sure go ahead and use it.

Anonymous-0 · Feb 24, 2011

just replace the d*amn oil! half-a$$ing a job isnt the way to save a buck....

IH fan · Feb 24, 2011

It takes a looooong time to cook water out of oil. We tried that several times when we had a heat exchanger leak in our hydraulic test machines. We would take the top off the reservoir, turn the heaters on to heat the oil to 225 to 250 degrees and let it sit for hours, circulate the oil/water mix to expose more to the atmosphere and even after a couple of days, it would still have water in it. Maybe not as much, but it seemed it took forever to get it cooked out. We had from 5,000 to 10,000 watt electric heaters to heat it. How much propane will you use for your turkey fryer to get it all out?
I understand wanting to save some oil, but there is a limit to when it's worth it. Funny thing was, the oil would look perfectly clear after a fairly short time while it was hot, but let it cool again and it would be "milky".

Tom Fleming · Feb 25, 2011

Replace the oil. What a lot of people don't understand is that there is a certain amount of solubility of water in hydrocabon based liquids. kerosene for one will mix a bit with water. As one poster stated, WARM looks normal, cool looks milky. always good to try to get the most use out of things, which is why a waste oil heater does just fine putting used oil to good use..........

mkirsch · Feb 25, 2011

(quoted from post at 13:14:37 02/24/11) I did buy new oil

Don't you think this was an important detail to include in the original post?

"I just put in new oil and it's water contaminated already!"

is a LOT different from

"Can I get the water out of my (implied OLD) oil and reuse it?"

Old oil is implied because that's what the case usually is, overwhelmingly. 99.9%. It's always some cheapskate trying to recycle 30-year-old gummy contaminated oil to save $50...

People wouldn't be admonishing you for being cheap, for one thing. People wouldn't be lecturing you about how you could damage your tractor, too...

Separating oil and water.

Fullers Farmalls

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