8

I am running a small market stall where I have a Winco EFS-16 Fryer which holds 8L of oil.

Since I have to be out of the park about 1 hour after we turn off the equipment, what is the fastest and safest way to transfer and dispose of the oil after we turn off the fryer?

The fryer does not have an easy way to drain oil, so I would have to spoon it out, or pickup the inner pan out of the fryer and pour the cooled oil into a metal container or funnel into a drum of some kind. It then has to be cool enough to carry in my car and disposed in a commissary.

seasoned
  • 284
  • 3
  • 10
jc303
  • 273
  • 1
  • 2
  • 7
  • You don't have to laddle it out, you can syphon it with a flexible tube. – rumtscho Sep 23 '14 at 20:00
  • Yes, I have experience with that but I would need a metal tube of sorts or something flexible resistant to oil and heat. Do you have a link to a material safety sheet on such a material? Also you have to get the oil flowing by moving the oil through the tube either by suction or by moving the oil through a coil..Its not that easy with oil that's still hot... – jc303 Sep 23 '14 at 20:05
  • silicone should resist hot oil well, it can be baked up to 220 Celsius. Maybe you need a slightly reinforced tube. The suction is harder to solve, I didn't think of that. Maybe some kind of a simple hand operated pump, but with time, you'll have to deal with clogging. – rumtscho Sep 23 '14 at 20:10
  • 1
    Syphoning is easy w/ a flexible hose ... insert one end of the hose. Submerge the other end of the hose then tightly clamp it at the surface of the liquid. Lift the hose out, move it lower than the vessel, then open the clamp. When it's a cold liquid, you can just dip your hand in and put your thumb over the end ... but I wouldn't want to do that with hot oil. – Joe Sep 23 '14 at 20:18
  • a search for 'hot oil syphon' found : http://lilorbits.com/products/list-lil-orbits-mini-donut-accessories.php (see items A109 & A110). No mention of pricing, though. – Joe Sep 23 '14 at 20:27
  • What temperature will the oil be at during service? – john3103 Sep 23 '14 at 21:02
  • 375 F standard for frying fritters and french fries. – jc303 Sep 24 '14 at 12:52
  • 5
    You are using potatoes already. Potatoes contain lots of water and hence are a good heat sink. Why not use the classic technique of adding waste potatoes and skins when you are done so as to cool the oil down (without adding more heat to the fryer), then remove the half-cooked potatoes? The potato bits have a greater surface area to dissipate heat via air cooling than a pool of oil. (This assumes that you can dispose of waste half-cooked potato bits as easily as oil, and doesn't address the disposal of the oil.) – András Salamon Sep 24 '14 at 18:06

3 Answers3

5

I don't know that this is necessarily the best way to do things, but if it were me, I'd likely rig up something using a few disposable aluminum pans :

To assist in our cleanup, we'll start out by assuming that your fryer is set to one side of a full sheet pan, with the other side free as a catchment area for any spills while we're emptying it.

First, we make a cooling device using 1/2 deep pan filled with ice, and then another 1/2 deep pan on top of it. Squish one of the corners of the top pan to make a sort of a spout. Set this on the vacant side of the sheet pan. To reduce the possible mess from working too quickly, cover the side of fryer near the cooling container with some aluminium foil.

Next, ladle the oil from the fryer into the cooling tray. Swish around the oil 'til it's cool enough to handle, then lift the oil-filled tray out and pour into your final recepticle for disposal. How much oil you put in each time depends on how sturdy the foil pans are.

Once you get the majority of the oil out of the fryer, you should hopefully be able to move it safely. If it's still hot on the outside, you can try wiping it down (to remove any oil residue), and then wipe it with wet towels to cool it down.

If you think that would take too long, your next option would be to find a metal can that could fit inside a larger bucket and seals well. Take whatever your local equivalent is to a 5 gallon bucket, add some heat-stable insulation along the bottom (eg, mineral wool), center the metal can on the inside of the bucket, then insulate between the can & bucket. You'll want to modify the lid for the plastic bucket so that it has a hole in the top to snugly fit the funnel. Assemble the whole thing, then either ladle into it, or attempt to extract the container and pour it in directly. Remove the plastic lid, seal the can, then re-attach the plastic bucket lid (but without the funnel).

The problem with this method is that you haven't actually cooled down the oil, and with the insulation, it'll stay hot for quite some time. (slowly heating up the outer container). You'll likely want to transfer the oil back into something disposable once it's cooled down enough to handle.

Joe
  • 80,708
  • 17
  • 159
  • 463
  • I posted this http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/135760/cooling-8-l-of-frying-oil-using-ice but they shut down my question. However the idea of quenching it in ice was my original idea, I just wanted a solid formula to work out the fastest way to cool any volume of oil. I think it's go to do with the surface area in contact with the cooling so I would agree with you - a pan would be better than say a round canister (depending on the surface area of course), and the heat would dissipate fast via the ice and via the surrounding air vs a canister. Thanks for this. – jc303 Sep 23 '14 at 20:08
  • 1
    An active cooling system would be even better - coil a tubing inside the oil container, pump ice-cold water through it. Similar to a PC water cooling, but you can use more volume of water, and you don't need to cool a certain chip, your whole tube area works to cool the stuff. But it's probably overkill for you. What might be a good idea though is to put the ice-filled pan on the oil, not below it - cold falls down, heat goes up. – rumtscho Sep 23 '14 at 20:29
  • @rumtscho : I thought about using a cooling line ... but I'd be afraid of cooling it down so far that it didn't flow well and backed up. As for the plan on top of the oil -- you risk putting too much weight on the oil, making a mess, and it means you can't easily stir it to cool it down. (and you're not trying to figure out where to put the greasy-bottomed tray while you ladle out your next batch to cool) – Joe Sep 23 '14 at 20:34
  • I think the reverse would work well. Coil a copper tube in a container full of ice water and pour the hot oil into a funnel at the top, as the oil flows through the coil it cools and dissipates heat to the water coming out at the other end luke warm probably. – jc303 Sep 24 '14 at 12:51
  • @jcooper : if you're considering it, I'd give it a test-run off-site ... the diameter of the tube is going to be significant ... most tubes that are thin enough to coil easily are fairly narrow (1/8" to maybe 1/4"), which if you cool down the oil to far, it will not flow through in a reasonable amount of time. It's okay for condensing alcohol, but will have problems with more viscous fluids. If you want to try it, go to a hardware store, and look for the coils they sell for connecting fridges w/ ice-makers to the home plumbing. – Joe Sep 24 '14 at 15:02
4

I had the same dilemma, quick and simple fix....yes!!!

Buy a 20 litre steel drum of cooking oil, pour half of it into other suitable containers, your then left with 10 litres of cold oil.

Take your 8 litres of boiling oil, get a steel funnel (kitchen funnel) and decant your hot oil slowly from the fryer via the funnel into the cold 10 litres of oil.

This will give you 18 litres of fluid in a 20 litre steel container. It also cools and regulates the hot oil temp with the cold oil and the outside of the steel container is warm but not HOT to touch allowing you to safely transport it!

Ps mind and use heat proof gloves when lifting your fryer pan, and use sensible protection on your clothes!!

Hope this helps!!

Nathian
  • 41
  • 1
  • Aeh, good option temperature-wise, but while you got the physics right, wasting 10l of oil might not be what OP wants. Cooled used oil that is to be discarded anyway, might be an option – Stephie Jul 23 '15 at 10:20
  • 1
    Yeah but the oil can still be re used! Simply place a filter in the funnel whilst pouring and you can re use again! :-) – Nathian Jul 23 '15 at 16:29
  • 2
    And I should have been clearer! This method is for oil that is pre-discard stage! Ie only used once or twice and still good after 1 use for cooking with again! :-) – Nathian Jul 23 '15 at 16:31
  • 2
    This system would still work, just stage your oils so that you grade your oil from fresh to discard. When you want to discard this batch of oil, mix it with cold discard oil. When you DO discard it. Keep half for the next time. Obviously use ONCE used cold oil to mix with ONCE used hot oil so you have a total container of ONCE used. That shouldn't be too difficult...especially since you can probably look at the oil to know what grade it is. – Escoce Jun 14 '16 at 18:27
2

The fastest way I found was to lift the oil pan and quench it into a shallow metal pan of melted ice. That cooled it down extremely fast, I would have logged the cooling rate if I had time, but within 10 minutes it was cool enough to pour into it's original plastic container and safely carry back to the commissary.

jc303
  • 273
  • 1
  • 2
  • 7
  • A good call for ones w/ removable linings. (that isn't so large that you can get to it easily). If you're going to have to pry it up to get (gloved) fingers under it ... two mini pry bars might work. (mini because you then turn them on their side to prop it up while you work the other side, but it might be easier to find something to push under there after lifting. (eg. a small-ish bit of wood )) – Joe Oct 25 '16 at 15:27
  • And thanks for following up your question w/ what's proven to work. – Joe Oct 25 '16 at 15:28
  • 1
    We really should have a formula for cooling oil based on the specific heat of the oil, volume, temperature at start and exposed surface area. I just couldn't find one. I am sure it would be easy to then plug in the values into matlab/excel/ti calc to get time to cool. – jc303 Oct 26 '16 at 17:18
  • A good idea -- and I found a copy of Fasina & Colley's 2008 paper "Viscosity and Specific Heat of Vegetable Oils as a Function of Temperature: 35°C to 180°C". Specific heat increases linearly as the temperature increases, about 17% over the range. (Canola is 2.208 at 35°C, 2.640 at 180°C). For the 35°C specific heats: Almond 2.354, Canola 2.208, Corn 1.673, Grapeseed 1.572, Hazelnut 1.726, Olive 1.746, Peanut 2.045, Safflour 2.076, Sesame 2.117, Soybean 1.675, Sunflower 2.244, Walnut 2.034 – Joe Oct 27 '16 at 02:23