The Deer Fat Experiment

 Here's the story. While I was cutting up a very large doe this season I noticed there was a good amount of hard fat that I was pulling off the hide, neck and hind quarters.  So why not try and make some fuel!

I melted down some of the fat and drained it into another pot to get rid of some solids and hair. I had some issues with titration and I noticed that when I added the hot oil to the room temp titration solution it immediately got hard. I shut it all down and let it cool till the next day.

I decided I should heat the titration solution. I heated it to 160f or so. Finally was able to get a .5 titration.  I started out with 2.5 liters of oil so I added 23 grams of KoH to .5 liters of methanol.  Everything seemed to turn out ok. (Seemed to) The BD had good separation and looked very clear. I thought I was going to do a 27-3 test to check conversion. The BD was still warm when I added it to the methanol. The methanol was 68f and the BD gelled.  I heated the methanol to 100F and did another test. It dissolved ok. There was still unreacted oil because I only mixed for 10-15 min with a whisk. I let it all sit till morning and discovered when I got back to work that the BD had also gelled sitting in the container on my desk. The room temp was 68F.

The deer fat experiment can't be ruled a complete failure just yet. I did get some conversion and separation. The mixing part also could have contributed to the very high gel temp. I can't imagine that I had 100% conversion with only 10-15 min mixing. I don't have any more deer fat left to do another experiment with. There is still one more hunt left and we do need another deer for our family, so if I'm blessed with another one, I will do a more accurate test in our Student Bio Lab.  If anyone else wants to try this please send me some info. I would like to hear about your experience.  Here is a tip, deer fat is hard to work with. Everything needs to be very warm, when it cools it sets up just like candle wax.