Yes they are
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Do the ball valves make it faster though? If the extractor is already massive, wouldnât it be easier to just add automated valves to it? Unless I am missing something, you would still have the same throughput but not need someone to turn valves?
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Iâm certainly not saying anything close to that. Iâm saying the Luna IO comes with an MVP, thatâs a huge bottle neck and for the money you can buy less expensive machines that don;t have auto valves, but can got 3-4x faster. I would want a faster system over a system that has auto valves.
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Let me know if you would like to automate that larger system. Even running it manually from a touchscreen and having the ability to track data would take a huge load off the technical lead and make running consistently on 24 hour shifts more realistic.
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How much does this Luna cost presently?
The mvp isnât for recovery.
Recovery is done passive on a Luna
The recovery pump pressurized the solvent tanks without nitrogen
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Alot
A lambo and a prius
Using a $12,000 pump to build pressure in the solvent tank sounds weird. Where is the pressure coming from?
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I think they use an MVP liquid pump, which is $8500, to move the solvent around. I could be wrong. Since they donât use nitrogen, and are running so cold, I would think they need a pump.
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no its an mvp vapor pump, its taking pressure from various different places, my luna had the mv 150xl and now a corken.
it uses various different vessels to build pressure from to push solvent around. during a drain its taking pressure from collection and pumping it into the material column. during fill its taking pressure from the material column and pushing that vapor into the solvent tank.
it can fill about 100lb of gas into the material column in about 4-5 minutes. Its bottom fill and recovers vapor from the top.
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They makes sense. The Corken is definitely a better option. Why canât you drain to the evaporator and introduce fresh solvent during the soak?
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its bottom drain And bottom fill. We have talked about adding a secondary top fill option to allow a drain and fill step to essentially flush the material clean or residual extract.
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Top fill/pressure and bottom drain is what I enjoyed from the atlas. Only stand point it had for recovery, I did notice newer models have a completely smooth column lip. If Luna does the top fill bottom drain loop, I think yâall will never be touched.
This would be clutch
Gotcha. I plumbed my automation retrofit kit to be able top or bottom fill the extraction column with the ability to do a nitrogen push on any vessel. I put a tube and shell evaporator on it so i could use the collection as staging for CRC, a pot still evaporator, or staging for the FFE if I skip CRC. If the CRC is used, it goes straight to the FFE and the flow through the media is subject to how fast the FFE performs.
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Bottom fill is definitely something i love and wouldnt want to lose it, but a top flush while draining would be super ideal, pretty easy to implement it to have both.
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More ideal for filtration purposes correct? Thatâs one thing that I noticed bottom fill was ideal for or just more even soak overall?
better soaking ability.
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I get your point on training operators to extract manually. It is a good sink or swim approach to training and it forces people to learn the process, learn some basic thermodynamics and fluid mechanics. But from Lunaâs perspective, if those operators donât learn the process well enough, theyâre not going to run the equipment well. We (and I) think the consistency of automation is worthwhile.
As for the throughput, I canât speak to that specifically as I donât know what equipment youâre comparing to ours. But in general, we are fairly competitive on price vs consistent throughput. Everyone has a story of running XXXlbs/day through their manual system but not many are able to maintain the high production rate because of the problems that come with manual operation. Our extractorsâ throughput isnât dependent on operator skill, knowledge, level of attention, or fatigue level.
Like has been said above, our recovery rate isnât dependent on the MVP150. Recovery is passive and driven by two chillers with a combined cooling capacity of two and half Huber Unistat 915ws (at -60C). Thatâs over $300k in equivalent Huber chillers. One chiller drives condensation and one chiller takes care of temp change.
And as for the hot water heater, youâre correct that the IO comes with a commercial (very similar to residential just more robust) hot water heater. But it does generate plenty of heat. The water heater outputs 6.5kW of heat. Our recovery rate averages around 2lbs/min for the IO Extractor. To evaporate 2lbs/min of butane/propane you need about 5.5kW of energy. Our recovery rate is not constant. It looks like a bell curve: slow at the beginning, peaks in the middle, slow at the end. That comes from our heat transfer area changing through the recovery process. So at some point, the recovery rate is faster than 2lbs/min and so technically, it does exceed the output of the heater elements. But, we have a huge amount of stored heat energy in the large volume of water in the heater, piping, and vessel jacket. So when the heat transfer area is high, our recovery rate isnât appreciably limited because we can use the stored energy in the water to increase the heat transfer rate above 5.5kW. Our water temp lowers a little bit from 140F but not too much. And itâs recovered back to 140F by the end of the recovery.
We chose commercial water heaters because they are ubiquitous, incredibly reliable, and easy to maintain. They do the job just as well as a ârealâ process heater while also being cheaper to maintain and easier to find someone to work on. Every plumber on the planet knows everything there is to know about maintaining a commercial/residential water heater.
The Oberon uses a âprocessâ water heater which means itâs a little harder to get parts and find a plumber or electrician who is familiar with the equipment. We would have used the same commercial water heater if they could be sized for the Oberon.
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