Active Vs passive recovery speed

@The_Lone_Stiller - Our smallest unit is the E4k original and runs around 30k. I would have to draw up a quote for accurate pricing. It’s a more of a traditional system but still features our patent pending technology.

You can get a good look at all of our active models on our website. All the specs are listed there.

GD-1 Solvent Recovery System
What is that? Is it a butane/propane reclamation column?
Edit: Yes, it’s a solvent recovery system. I really wish I had some money to throw around because I really like your equipment!

2 Likes

Yeah I didn’t know that was a thing either. Wow

3 Likes

It’s a wiper designed for propane. :sunglasses:

8 Likes

I want to see that in action.

5 Likes

Just putting this here

1 Like

You can generate the same dP just with temperature control though…

You could if you had total control of thermal efficiencies on your heat transfer surface like a wiped film but a batch process runs on a bell curve which is accelerated by changing dp.

1 Like

I’ve been using a hybrid system for years. Use the pump to move solvent from tank to material column to collection and also to recover material columns. Use passive to recover solvent from collection.

There is a time and place for both techniques, and they work best when used together.

9 Likes

What if I told you that chemical engineering has come far enough to manage thermal efficiencies at scale with more technologies than wiped-film?

They just haven’t been adapted to our particular industry.

4 Likes

I certainly dont know everything. Or want to. Im sure op would appreciate finally learning how passive is faster than active.

The pistons on a pump physically can’t cycle fast as vapor can flow.

Answered.

10 Likes

I would add also that as fast as phase changes from liquid to vapor and vise-versa can occur.

Imagine you have 100% thermal efficiency of 1MW (1000kW) for a heater and chiller. There isn’t a piston with enough displacement to maintain the rate of vaporization.

5 Likes

Shit, is my chiller undersized again?

Can’t I use a pump for that :face_with_hand_over_mouth:

4 Likes

Biggest I’ve found: 10,000 ton york titan chiller | HVAC Site - Professional HVAC Contractors Forum

10,000 tons = 35,000kW

3 Likes

That’s a hell of a pump (chiller)!

3 Likes

Let me just mention that that capacity of heat removal is enough to condense over 90kg of n-Butane per second.

That’s 11,000lbs butane/min.

If y’all can spec a compressor that can keep up, please let me know!

7 Likes

Presumably there is a whole lot of heat that thing needs to dump, math says more than the 35,000kW of cooling it provides.

At that scale it would be brain dead not to use the “waste” heat for the hot side.

So how do I implement that at 10kW?

“mini-split”?!?

2 Likes

In many cases, when heat isn’t required for processes and its “just” a chilling plant, they’d likely be near a body of running water and the water would be used as a heat sink.

If I had to take a design stab at it…purely heuristics at this point…I’d say isolate the heat sink as a heat exchanger with appropriate surface area and flow rate, to have a meaningful dT between inlet and outlet.

I think from a theoretical perspective, the difficulty is having enough heat exchangers surface area.

3 Likes

After peak vapor flow and the ratio of solvent to extract decreases in a batch process it gets harder and harder to separate the solvent from the extract. It becomes an insulator. Here a compressor can speed up the process by lowering the boiling point and positively displacing the remaining vapor.

Ultimately this discussion is a matter of energy. Any energy you design into a system for dt if you add more energy for dp and optimize efficiency it will be faster than the dt alone. Im not arguing that a compressor can be a limiting factor to peak flow Im arguing that a compressor can make a process faster overall.

2 Likes