So, without being rude. But, that statement kinda sums it up.
Simpler.
As @WarrenB said. It’s not for someone that doesn’t have a decent understanding of thermodynamics. For the general “extract artist” (hard finger quotes, makes it sound like subway), active is perfectly fine. Run the machine, turn this on, turn this valve, turn this on, turn this valve, turn that off. Vioala that’s that.
I like having more control over what is happening, how fast something flows, what temp it is when it flows. Temperatures do play a huge role in the end product. I don’t have nearly as much control over what is happening when I have to rely on a pump doing something that I’m perfectly capable of doing without it.
Also, where’s this active system that pushes 3lb a min. That’s not crude, nor an empty recovery tank under vacuum, and what temperature is the collection set to.
Again, a propely tuned passive system will out perform an active system of the same caliber.
And one of the most popular pumps out there, being an MVP, still needs regular maintenance. Every 3-4 months you’re going to spend roughly 3k servicing it. And that’s under normal usage, not heavy. And that’s just one. Most guys need two just to get more than 1lb a min. Those things cost like 12k. So, twenty four thousand dollars in pumps. Which, conservatively, need six thousand dollars in service every four months. In one year you will have spent nearly fifty thousand dollars in pumps and maintenance. Just to have raging anxiety at the end of the day because you’ve been in a gun range all day long with those things firing off in your c1d1.
And I don’t recover with any massive vapor pressure. My tank is under vacuum, maintains vacuum throughout recovery. And my collection doesn’t get any higher than 20-30psi and lowers the second I open up the vapor path to my recovery tank.
And it appears that thing needs to be water cooled as well, possibly. That seems like a whole lot of effort for something that can naturally happen without all this machinery.
I feel you in control over the whole process, it’s like manual (passive) VS. automatic (active) but in this case automatic is prone to stalling and isn’t the best option. Jacketed bases and ideal water or heat transfer is so important. I ended up using some of the pump money for passive upgrades. Got a jacketed 6×6 base, a sous vide, 200 ft of hosing and I just gotta get a lid with a 1/2" recovery port. I used the sousvide to preheat the water to 100°f last time and I love it
I remember ordering a recovery pump then canceling the order right after I read about the 1/2" fittings trick.
Least amount of restrictions as possible all the way to phase change helps so much. I’m opening up my recovery to ½ all the way through. I have a ⅜ opening coming out of my sieve, which is choking me down a little.
I’m working on getting a different collection, as well. I want to change up to a tall 8" jacketed one. Get a couple different bowls for different functions, I want my main one to have no pour spout. I’ll utilize two ½ lines with that when I get the changes made. I still have those jacketed coils from nboler that I think I will send back and have him beef em up for lc02 and ½ coils.
Beautiful Idea! I don’t have a sieve yet. I was no bullshit just now looking at columns and comparing prices to build a sieve. I had a crazy idea of putting the sieve on a high pressure quadpod. I think i asked before but I’ll ask again, Is having a jacketed sieve helpful? cause if it is i’ll get a bigger bucket and another pump and run a jacketed sieve. I feel like it might act as a coil in a way.
I’m not exactly sure why a simpler design that achieves the same end result (a high quality extract) is considered a negative here.
In general, simplifying a process is considered an advantage. I don’t think there is really anywhere in the process where a passive setup has “more control” somewhere than active. Can you elaborate? I suppose you could be alluding to CRC with your references to controlling flow rate and temperature but the same things are possible with an active system. As long as the result is the same, simpler is better.
IMO, you are sounding rather aloof here. Kinda like you are trying to belittle active systems and their users as having less understanding of thermodynamics than you lofty passive guys. Dred, could you even list and explain the three basic laws of thermodynamics without resorting to reference material? If not, maybe we should all cool it with the “thermodymagician” talk.
Also, your description of “run the machine, turn this on, turn this valve etc.” used to imply the simplicity of, and take a dig at active systems could be just as easily used to describe how you run a passive system. IMO, all in all, extraction is not really that complicated and none of us should get too out of pocket with our egos about that.
I know there are a lot of people who don’t understand the idea of vapor generation in the collection pot and how it effects recovery time. A lot of people think you can just hook up a bigger pump and get faster recovery. That is not always true.
I was thinking about the new Titan system Xtractor Depot will be releasing soon.
They’re using a 24Kw heater and I believe Corken pumps or something similar. They said the temp on collection is around 120F during recovery and gets ramped down when solvent levels get low to preserve quality oils. Keep in mind that the temp of the boiling pool will remain at the boiling point of the solvent under those conditions and not raise to 120F until the solvent starts to run low, hence the ramp down in temp at the end of recovery.
Care to elaborate? What exactly do you mean by out perform? Fastest recovery rate is only part of the battle, IMO.
What does a slightly faster recovery rate matter if the overall system throuhput is better due to being able to inject the next column while recovering the previous one?
I’m not really sure where you got this info, but it seems a little off the mark to me.
Firstly, MVP recommends replacing the FKM diaphragms every 1000 hours. You would need to run the pump for 8 hours a day every single day for 4 months to hit that limit. I am seeing a listed price of $750 for replacement diaphragms and they are pretty easy to replace so I’m not sure where you are getting $3000. Can you explain?
IMO, MVP is not a very good offering and is only popular because people like to get ripped off by companies that cater to cannabis. The current MVP vapor pumps are way overpriced and don’t provide good performance IMO. You’re right that most people need two of them to handle large vapor loads. $12k for only 6CFM is dismal. They have been saying they have a new 18CFM pump coming out soon, we will have to wait and see what the price looks like.
No water cooling on the model I linked, it has a water cooled after cooler on the outlet.
Also, it’s really more like the GC5000 looks like the Corken. Corken has been around since 1924, and I think they split off from Blackmer which was founded in 1903. I believe Precision used the existing pump design and has the GC5000 manufactured specifically for them in India.
I have to return to the crux of my reasoning: Let’s say you want to inject another column while simultaneously recovering from the collection pot. How do you do that? Or do you have to inject one column, fully recover, then inject the next?
In order to get liquid to flow out of the solvent tank, through the column and into the collection, the vapor pressure above the liquid in the tank needs to be higher than the pressure in the collection pot. This is the opposite of what you need to get vapor to flow from collection to tank and you can’t have both conditions at the same time so you can only have one flow regime at a time.
If you stall your recovery to inject another column, the heat on the collection will cause further pressure rise, hindering injection rate.
I understand you could use a passive system consisting of multiple chilled solvent tanks and diversion valves to get around the problem of injecting while recovering but the amount of complication added to the SOP is just not worth it compared to an active system, IMO, especially when you factor in the ability to use a warm vapor pressure assist with active instead of nitrogen assist.
I agree if you have a continuous process like crude or mid-grade oil production, where each step of the process is more standalone than a batch style closed-loop, passive makes a lot more sense.
In a continuous process you can have an intermediate tank between your extraction step and recovery step that holds liquid volume waiting to be recovered. You can also have a standalone collection system after the condenser that holds and sends liquid solvent back to the injection tanks. This makes it so you would never have the need to pressurize the recovery side of the condenser to get liquid flow like a smaller, batch system.
The economy of scale in a continuous process is what sets it apart, IMO. Generally, in a continuous process you are dealing with biomass weighed in thousands of pounds and are not concerned with cleanly separating batches.
Typically I have batch sizes of quality sugar trim ranging from 5-60# and wet live resin batches ranging from 10-150#. For those ranges I do not need or want a continuous process.
This thread kinda got buried and I see we have a new one that just popped up so I’m bumping this one to the top to try and keep the conversation in one place.
Can anyone who runs a passive system answer my question quoted here about running multiple columns into a single recovery vessel?
There seems to be several compromises that are made to get a medium/large batch passive system up and running that are negated by using a pump. I understand that people like the passive idea and I think it works great on a smaller scale where you can simply dunk your tank in dry ice, but once the scale starts to increase (batch system, not continuous) it just gets more difficult and more compromises need to be made. There is a reason they use pumps to empty train cars and not just delta T.
Like I’ve said before, even if you can achieve the absolute fastest recovery rate possible with a direct passive recovery setup, you can still get extremely fast, highly similar rates with an active setup with a lot less headaches, a simpler system design and simpler operational procedures.
running multiple columns to the same collection pot in a passive system is easy.
evaporator + collection pot are generally always open to the condenser + solvent collector. if the condenser remains colder than collection pot any new hydrocarbon vapor generated goes into it bringing the evaporator pressure down as it turns that vapor into a liquid.
columns are rinsed with liquid solvent that is generally pushed with n2 into the evaporator. excess n2 pressure is removed from above the condenser/solvent collector.
one needs to move on from the super basic designs the industry has settled on to fully realize the potential of passive recovery.
It’s easy for me as I run warm solvent so the pressure in my material columns stays high. I keep my collection pot with two solvent recovery tanks connected. The collection with a warm circulating bath stays around 20psi. I usually dump 4-6, 4x48 columns into my collection.
No passive is not cheaper. Literally why i went active.
It takes around 75-100 lbs of di to inject through a coil and recover about 71 lbs of solvent ime.
I would run through 100# of di on 2 4lb passive runs (40lbs of solvent)
This is ultimately what I wanted to bring to the table . . . My perspective was while passive was generally overall faster, it still had major costs that were not making it overall more efficient. While I love the passive system style and sound (or lack thereof) What are the tradeoffs in overall energy cost vs speed/noise & pump maintenance?
Passive is not faster. The bulk transfer stage at the high point in bell curve is only time the pump wont increase speed. But these pumps are flow thru so you could literally shut them off and the pressure would flow thru them. At all other points running the gas compressor will aid recovery times. And youre not accounting for the recovery of solvent in your material vessel. That is where the biggest gains active has over passive.
Can one of you passive gurus actually explain how this works on a batch system?
If you have a passive batch system running with a single solvent tank and you run a column or an entire rack of columns simultaneously into the collection pot and begin recovery, how do you then inject the next column or rack full of columns while the first is still recovering back into the same tank you injected from?
What I’m gathering is if you’re using a single solvent tank on a passive system you need to wait for recovery to be completed and remove heat from the collection before applying pressure assist to the tank and injecting the second column.
The other option I can see is you have to use a separate cold tank for recovery while you inject from the first like soxhlet has described. You then need valves and hoses to deal with switching everything around and it still sounds difficult to inject while recovering.
This is why you see some people using “hybrid systems” to get the best of both worlds.
If you follow Bhogart on IG you can see that they have one setup with separate vapor paths for the active and passive sides requiring the operator to deal with switching back and forth. I’m sure they eek out the best of both worlds that way, but again, the system complexity and steps added to the SOP aren’t worth it IMO.
A simple bypass line around the pump in any active system could accomplish the same thing but if the pump is sized correctly and freely flows through its valves allowing a degree of bypass, why bother? Having to open and close the bypass valve is just one more opportunity for a mistake to happen.
Like I’ve said before, even if you can achieve the absolute fastest recovery rate possible with a direct passive recovery setup on a batch system, you can still get extremely fast, highly similar rates with an active setup with a lot less headaches, a simpler system design and simpler operational procedures that will probably allow you to get through more material in a work day.
I think a lot of people don’t understand that pumps like a TR21 or CMEPOL are very undersized for our purposes and it requires several of them at minimum to be worthwhile.
Some of you guys laugh and jest about trying to have a simple system design. I believe simpler is better if the results are the same or highly similar. Don’t forget I’m talking specifically about batch systems. I think people add unneeded complexity to inflate their own ego and sense of self-importance. In my systems, I avoid “jangles” and complicated designs as much as possible.
IMO all a batch system needs to have is one solvent tank with liquid and vapor ports, a pressure assist tank, pump and however you want to setup and connect columns/collection pot. Having to add other tanks with more valves, lines and steps in the SOP in the name of a minor increase in recovery rate doesn’t make sense to me.
