Remove a quart of oil from a 5-gallon pail of water

Due mostly to poor planning on my part, I've got a 5-gallon pail containing about a quart of oil and roughly 4 gallons of water. I would really like to get the oil out of the water. The oil is very light amber and mostly in small blobs. Some of the oil has that white milky look that you get in radiator water when you've got oil leaking into the water jacket.

I don't have any tramp oil skimming equipment.

Thank you very much!
Dave

Call Shell ask how they would handle it.

I have seen oil absorbing pads or what not advertised in MSC.
I always wondered about using those in coolant tanks,and then using them them to start bon fires.

But really why? are you saving the water or the oil ? And why ?

For a one-shot deal you could go to the cheap housewares department and buy the largest fat separator you can find.

This one is too expensive, but you get the idea OXO Good Grips(R) 4-Cup Fat Separator - BedBathandBeyond.com

A quart at a time, should go fast.

Turkey fryer burner and a metal 5 gallon pail.

Boil off the water, dispose of the oil.

Drill a mall hole in the bottom of a 5 gallon plastic bucket, install a screw in hole, add oil and water mix, allow to settle. Drain majority of water out by removing screw. Go to the first suggestion.

Cheers
Trev

Paper towels then the trash? It should take less than a roll.

I have to agree with another poster, what is the intent? Save one or the other? Or just separate them so they can be properly disposed of?

If it's the latter then get as much water as you can out (the bucket w/ hole & screw sounds like an effective idea), then put the oily water in a jug and drop it off at your local oil collection point (nearly all auto stores collect used motor oil and willingly take it for free).

Put it in the sun, the water will dehydrate, the oil won't. Gotta have enough surface area, so a large metal pan may be easier, and the oil can't cap the water.

If your intent is to salvage the magic oil, scoop it off the top of the water. Place in appropriately sized cookware. Warm to 250F and stir until all the water has evaporated. If undertaken in your wife's kitchen/cookware, discretion may be advised.

Sea Farmer said:

For a one-shot deal you could go to the cheap housewares department and buy the largest fat separator you can find.

This one is too expensive, but you get the idea OXO Good Grips(R) 4-Cup Fat Separator - BedBathandBeyond.com

A quart at a time, should go fast.

Click to expand...

Better-yet would be the old-timey hand-cranked centrifugal cream separator. Viscosity on this mix shouldn't be all that different from milk and butterfats.

Prolly fetching 'antique' prices on ebay though (haven't dared look..).

Bill

Fling bucket contents onto dirt road.

Water goes away, oil is usefull as dust control,
dispersed in the water will allow it to be
spread out over a larger area.

Yes...it is a scientific fact that by dispersing the oil directly into the dirt, you are performing the ultimate in recycling by returning it to the very ground from whence it sprang. It's a sacred moment, really.

GregSY said:

Yes...it is a scientific fact that by dispersing the oil directly into the dirt, you are performing the ultimate in recycling by returning it to the very ground from whence it sprang. It's a sacred moment, really.

Click to expand...

Augmented by selecting the Holy ground from whence the Poison Ivy sprangeth... adding "Roundup" or siblings recommended anyway... Damned stuff seems to thrive on converting all other hydrocarbons to urushiol.

Pour it slowly on a bale of straw, let dry, burn the straw.
Bill D.

I read on PM in the past, some pretty "wise" advice that I though was both comical, yet clever as well.

You are allowed to wash dirt and oil off your hands, so dip your hand in the oily water, then wash clean. In a few days it should be gone. Then you can use the water for some other noble task. Like refilling the water fountains, or watering flowers, or mix it with your windshield washer fluid...

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Ok, more seriously, I would probably just poke the tiniest pin-hole in the bucket, and let the water drip out. When 99% of the water is gone, pout it into a container, and take the oil to the car-parts store....

Put the whole thing on eBay. Advertise it as "nearly new" oil and include some dark, out-of-focus pictures.

Thank you all very much for your ideas!

Several people wanted to know more about the end-game. I want a scheme that makes the water clean enough to dispose of, and the oil sufficiently water-free to drop it off with my other waste oil at the local auto parts store without giving them more than a nominal amount of water with it. They're always OK with a little water, but don't like it when there's a lot.

Snowman's pan-in-the-sunlight sounds good, but it rains here during the summer basically every day and I am sure to get nailed before the water all evaporates. Other locales may find this works perfectly.

Sea Farmer's turkey-fat-separator also sounds interesting, but my wife has a smaller version and I was noticing over the holidays that meat fat doesn't mix with the water at all. The oil I'm dealing with is partly emulsified; there are lots of little globs of it. I tried separating it with a siphon using 1/4" tubing, thinking that the liquid flow rate would be so small that it wouldn't agitate the bucket and I could get good separation. Didn't really work: too many little oil globs.

David Scott's paper towels certainly would work and is the simplest way, but as he notes the oil then heads to the trash. If it was really just this one quart of oil, I guess I could grin and bear it, but I'd like to have a method in my "toolbox" to separate and recycle the oil for future use.

cmccull166's suggestion to call Shell is excellent, and come Monday morning I'm going to talk to someone in their customer service dept. Also, the absorbing pads re-purposed as bonfire ignition aids is sort of recycling, but...

I want to check with Shell, but Trevj's idea of adding some heat and boiling off the water has me thinking pretty hard. All these oils have boiling points at least several hundred degrees F above the boiling point of water. If I kept the pot at 212 degF, I'm sure some of the oil would evaporate but not at anything close to the rate that the water would. I want to look into this a little more.

Thank you all again very much!
Best,
Dave

I use the absorbent spill-kit pads to remove hydraulic oil floating on water all the time. I just throw a couple of pads on the surface and wait an hour or two. You barely get a film left behind.