Ive never seen a propane whipped film evaporator. Nor do we have interest in it. We developed the butane falling film evaporator as a spin off of our ethanol FFE. I personally still prefer batch evaporation instead of continuous feed evaporation. We have clients using the butane FFE for live resin, it works well if you are doing hundreds of pounds of the same strain it makes sense. Otherwise batch evaporation give more control…
1000# a day is a lot of socks.
As for modularity… We’ve been displaying and marketing our Systems’ Modularity from day one. Its the cornerstone of our system designs. So these guys will need a novel marketing point.
Also 1:1 ration sounds a little fishy. Doing a high pressure, hot solvent extraction that is refined with media is what that sounds like to me.
But it sounds like these guys have it dialed in with their secret Thermodynamic tech… I love buying secret tech…
In our smaller units, 12-15lbs fills the basin to working level, the Behemoth R600 operates on 70lbs for the day and can process over 2000lbs per day (100lbs/hr), with about 40lb final solvent recovery at the end of the day.
From there we cycle the same solvent through the bio over a period of time (patented). At 75psi inlet & 125psi outlet with a 50f inlet gas, at 725 RPM, the 091 moves 5.5lbs of propane per minute, for which we typically cycle a 12lb sock for 20 minutes, which would put us at 110lbs of solvent across the bio from a source of only 12-15lbs.
The WFE is great for large volume recovery and we have yet to max it out. Our novel approach is to reduce COG’s by taking a completely different path to extraction by ditching expensive & power hungry ancillary equipment that is typically required for operation. All of our systems come with their own built in thermal control system that can both heat to +50c and refrigerate to below -50c (patent pending).
The pressure is high yes, but the solvent is cold. The pressure helps in many ways but mainly cancels out solvent channeling by pushing liquid solvent to all corners at a high enough pressure that condenses & extracts from all reaches of the vessel. Increased pressure means less heat (enthalpy) is required to boil the same volume of solvent per minute. High inlet pressure to the compressor moves more volume than low inlet pressure. Henry’s law comes into play as the partial pressure above a solution determines the gas content within that solution - which essentially forces terpenes to stay in the solvent even in our WFE.
Any 6lb+ per min passive recovery guysin the chat?
Current recovery is 5-8lb passive on n-butane, but I’m trying to optimize. How beneficial is it to step down hose size following the phase change?
Also debating whether or not it’s necessary to implement entire additional loop with seive and tube and shell(mostly tube and shell). Or just T my recovery outputs into same loop. Assuming additional whole loop is much more efficient.
I gotta get a film to play around, never had the luxury of having decent recovery at lower temps
What makes you think it would be beneficial to do that?
@Dred_pirate once you start to recover 1-2+ gallons of nbutane per minute it can help to step down in line or tube size to acheive a higher pressure and flow rate .
For example 4 inch recovery off the evaporation vessel , then to a dessicant, then tube and shell for intial stage of condensing. Stage down to 1/2" condensing coils after the tube and shell becuase phase change has occured and have 1 or 2 1/2" lines coming off the coils going to solvent tank.
The extra restriction after phase change has occurred leads to a higher pressure and faster recovery . You dont want a restriction on vapor flow but after phase change has occurred it can be beneficial depending on operating temps and pressure .
For instance instead of maintaing 20-30 psi during recovery with a wide open recovery that is 2" triclamp minimum all the way through hitting 1 gpm solvent recovery. You could run 60-80 psi with a restriction in recovery after phase change and hit 2-3 gpm . Just imagine how fast you can move liquid solvent through a 1/2" line at 80 psi . Your going to be recovering as fast as you can inject material columns.
As long as you have proper heating and cooling power with a properly staged recovery you can hit crazy speeds.
The problem is the vapor will rush through the recovery system too fast and not properly condense . With the proper restriction in place after phase change it creates more pressure equating to a much higher liquid flow
I’ve heard it before, and always wanted to try, but never got around to it.
I’ll give this a try. The other day I had coil after my tube and shell to try and lighten the load on my chiller. However this resulted in slower speeds, which made me consider how much restriction is too much restriction.
I think this was more so because my heat was lacking tho. Recovery jacket has only been 100F recently, and usually it’s much hotter.
Also was thinking, I wonder if a jacketed seive would be beneficial. Would be heated all the way thru seive then.
There are some pretty heavily mis-understood physics taking place here.
I keep preaching you need to increase the basin pressure because it lowers the enthalpy required to boil and due to the higher pressure you move more mass per minute.
It is counter-intuitive that restricting flow will increase flow…
But it can under the right conditions.
Same goes for condensation… Keep that pressure HIGH so that you need LESS enthalpy to condense back to liquid.
Running through 1/2" tube after say 1" pushes all the molecules together, increasing the likelihood of condensation. A 1/2" tube maxes out around 35lbs/minute of liquid transfer.
“To achieve a flow rate of 35 pounds per minute of liquid propane, the liquid must move through a 1/2” tube at a velocity of approximately 4.24 meters per second (m/s)."
I agree with you 100% in fact i was going to quote your post earlier “increase the basin pressure because it lowers the enthalpy required to boil and due to the higher pressure you move more mass per minute” .
Honestly just letting your collection build to 60- 100 psi before you start recovery is one of the easiest ways to just get a faster recovery. I always used to do this but never understood why it helped so much until you started explaining these things . Like you said under the right circumstances these things can be beneficial.
Restriction on the recovery has to be placed strategicly in order for it to be beneficial. Also depending on line size in general you may or may not receive any benefits from doing it . Pretty insane you can move 7gpm of liquid butane through a single 1/2" line . The general concept is to have as large of a recovery path for vapor then after phase change cut it down because its liquid and it can flow very fast through a single half inch line . For example how you said " Running through 1/2" tube after say 1" pushes all the molecules together, increasing the likelihood of condensation.
Those poor terps.
I don’t think I can get that much pressure at the temps I use, even in a falling film I don’t have to go any warmer than I already do to push 2 or 3 times what I can normally. I’m sure you know butane pulls it’s own vacuum with excessive pressure and temperatures not necessary.
And normally I have two vapor lines going into one liquid line. One system I’m running tapers to ⅜" coils for each ½" vapor line and the only problem I have is the heater is only 7.2kw or something so I won’t get much more than 2lbs a min on this one. My other setup has an instant hot water heater on it. I won’t have the same restrictions on that one. It’s also a bizzybee that I’ll be running.
The terps come out great actually. As @Zack_illuminated mentioned Henry’s law helps keep the terps in solution the higher the pressure . Also as the solvent boils we all know it has an evaporitve cooling effect . If you took a tempature reading from the center of the solution its very close to the boiling point of the solvent . Just like no matter how much you heat boiling water it wont get above 212°F . So the terpene loss is very minimal. My oil tastes great better than almost all the other oil i try so its good enough for me . I run plenty of live resin and it all comes out so fire . I do dial temps back slightly just to be safe . As long as you cut the heat off once your recovery is down to the last 30% your fine .
This is really only relavent if your trying to recover 10-20+lbs a minute . If you dont want or need those rates then its not necessary. Im sure you system runs great and works well for you needs. Try to run 20+lbs per min recovery and you will go down this same path
I really appreciate everyone in these threads!
I’ve long thought the same thing: in the chef world, boiling water can never surpass the boiling point of water until the water is gone. I’ve assumed it was similar for all dissolved liquids, thus not worrying about the loss of terps. A proper scientist, or someone with testing equipment would have to verify that tho.
I go heated recovery port 2”, 2” through my seive, until 3/4” tube and shells. Was just considering swapping down to 1/2 from there to solvent tanks. Imma try it out, not to hard to test.
Would love to get my hands on a FFE to play around tho!
This is one of the sexiest pictures I’ve ever seen! That Corken and hose management!
Weew that’s an oldie there… Pre-ProJak Behemoth.
What is funny about that picture though is the whole system was operated on that little 120lb tank in the upper right. Only need 75lbs for the day to process at 100lbs/hr and you recover 30-40lbs at the end of the day. Eventually they got the 500lb tank in the room.
I hear someone has acquired this old girl up and is working on getting it operational again. This was the design I had figured out how to crash CBDa isolate with quite a while ago.
Terps don’t have that low of a bp. They do boil off. Building that much pressure with “hydrocarbons” in the mix, they will evaporate. Vent that 100 psi vapor and I bet it’ll smell like terps. If you can smell it, it’s evaporating. And I agree with you, when it’s “boiling” it won’t go above it’s bp. You said you are building up heat and letting the pressure raise (with Normal butane, or a mix?) upto 100psi? I don’t even build up 30 psi if I let it sit.
What is it, something along the lines of “the engineer says it works one way, but the tech (operator) says it works this way in actual application”. I’ve been having people tell me that same nonsense about the terps not being effected. But it’s never stood ground, the proof has never been in the pudding. Sure do you have the capabilities to go faster, sure. But, that doesn’t mean you aren’t making compromises. Sort of how cars are less reliable the more power you ask from them. In this situation, the reliability is your terps.
Wouldn’t be a problem with a falling film and an empathy boost. Wouldn’t need expose it to heat for very long at all, and nowhere near the temps to achieve, let alone, 60 psi.
It will require a bunch of heating and cooling. Either use the vapors to heat and vice versa. And at that point you will need to be feeding constantly and still need a heat source
My average operating pressure on the collection is generally 30-60 psi with nbutane . I was simply stating that an easy way to get really fast recovery is to let your pressure build as high as possible then start recovery there are many benefits to doing this . I have 2 solvent tanks, and a buffer tank so i can push columns as fast as possible without waiting for everything to push through the crc . I inject and recover constantly due to having 2 solvent tanks . So i never stall recovery any more . Im just explaining the easiest way to increase recovery. From all my personal experience the terp loss is so minimal you could never tell. Im all about the terps man if i felt like i was making an inferior product i would never run that way .
I don’t build up hardly any pressure, very little restriction on my recovery. I preheat collection pot to 120f, and then start pouring into it, open recovery at same time.
Eventually work the temps up
Nevermind this, I don’t think the comment was directed at me.
I feel this way as well. But don’t have capabilities to properly test terp loss at different recovery temps