We are looking for innovative ways to winterize 480-960 gallons of ethanol every 24 hours and have been looking at different options including custom build cryofreezers with large holding stills built in with inlet & outlet pumps so that there is no need to ever open the chamber except for cleaning and also the thought behind this is the protection of wax and lipids desolving back into our crude.
Also another method we’ve considered is custom built stills with recirculating chillers running through them either by themselves or in conjuntion with the freezer to bring temperatures down quicker.
Let me know if anyone else has any thoughts on the subject.
CURED SOCIETY
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That’s a wide range as far as gallons go. Keep in mind that you’re probably better off maximizing surface area in contact with the colder surrounding environment in a freezer to get it cold in as short a timeframe as possible, so it would probably work better to have multiple smaller tanks on a common manifold rather than one huge one, unless you have some way of agitating the liquid inside to expose fresh (warm) mix to colder outside surfaces.
Other than that, stage your filtration so you aren’t changing filters every minute, more surface area (look at Sambo Creeck’s offerings) and more CFM on the vacuum side are the way to do it. I posted a thread a while back on how to improve my own winterization process:
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Thank you for the insight, I will look into sambo creek today. Do you have any recommendations for safe agitation of the holding tanks?
CURED SOCIETY 
do you suppose it may be possible to just connect to chillers to a large heat exchanger and flow the room temp solution through it, thereby cooling the solution to -80 extremely quickly and winterizing in a continuous manner?
The amount of chilling capacity you need to do that in real time is INSANELY huge, to do 100 GPH from room temp to -80C you would need about 20 kW of cooling power at -80C, for reference the Huber 930W has 1/4 that capacity and costs over $325k.
You might be able to get away far cheaper and less cooling power by staging it, put your room temp homogenized liquid into a walk in freezer to take it down to -20C or so, then use the expensive TCU to take it from -20 down to -80
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But do you really need 100GPH? He’s talking about more like 500gal over 24 hour, which is just 21 GPH. Furthermore, -80C isn’t really necessary. I see now that the reference to -80C wasn’t even the author but rather a link. I have winterized in a plain -20C freezer with great results, and we can be do better and go to -40C or -60C. To drop from 20 to -40 at 21 GPH is only like an 8th of the chilling power you cited, and at -40C which is much more achievable. The cheapest cryodax unit can handle that.
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Blast freezer in a shipping container? Up to (20) 55gal drums would fit easy with plenty of air flow around them.
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The range OP listed was up to 960 gallons, my thought was plan for the worst because in my experience once you can reach a certain throughput its only a matter of time before you are going to try and increase that throughput past the original plan.
I don’t think circulating it through a heat exchanger is a bad idea its just getting down to those temperatures with a viscous liquid that might have some solids mixed in, pumping becomes more of a hassle versus the room temp homogenized ethanol and crude mixture.
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I like this idea could anybody weigh in on the blast freezers ability to cool down this many drums?
Hello sir,
I just bought a cascade cooling compressor Set of 12 KW at -60C used before for a walk in freezer and i bought a compressor unit used before for a -30 C walkin freezer i am currently investigating what method is best to transfer the heat i also believe that making a large tank with heat exchangers in the middel should work
Fact is every expert i have spoken recomends that a precooling of the liquid should be done prior to the cascade cooling to help so to say the cascade compressors Please share your plan i am curios to your setup good luck [quote=“CuredSociety, post:1, topic:4013”]
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Could you explain further what your SOP is?
Well My end wish is
To
Be able to freeze to -60C 6000 liters per day i Will use the “frozen” ethanol for Washing the biomass inside of a sonic bath
Spin dry etc etc Please remember that i don t have to comply with Any rules
Or regulations for all My actions are beeing considered illegal for i work in marocco
I bought the cascade system for a bargain its 11 years old butt in exelent condition
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Agitation of the liquid is preferably by overhead stirring for that has the least amount of pump engine heat transfer
I have Also made xl magnetic stirrers from worm pumps and strong magnets at 600RPM quit simpel actualy
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Worm elektromotor
Sorry not
Pump
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I’m doing the same in my lab buildout for cold ethanol extraction to avoid winterizing. Plan is to stage ethanol chilling at -10C walk in fridge to -40C freezer to -86C cryo freezer. On scalability I’ll just double up on freezers until a better solution is found.
Does anyone have any more thoughts or proven methods for the Thread?
The amount of chilling capacity you need to do that in real time is INSANELY huge, to do 100 GPH from room temp to -80C you would need about 20 kW of cooling power at -80C, for reference the Huber 930W has 1/4 that capacity and costs over $325k.
A cryodax 50 or 60 would do 100 GPH to -70, I think they’re in the sub 100k range.
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There is really nothing you can do but throw Kw of cooling at it, or add time. Please see my “Ultimate Chiller” thread and plug your specs into that formula. That will give you exactly how much cooling capacity you need.
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what do you think about putting crude oil in a food grade bucket and put it in -86c cryo and just picking up the bucket and shake it around. but waiting the full 4-6 hours would this work?
It would have to be crude cut with a solvent, at 0C crude (winterized or not) moves like molasses, at -86C it probably has the consistency of a brick.
You would be far better off waiting overnight, I suspect you wouldn’t get the cool down on the entire 5 gal bucket in the timespan you are wanting to unless you had something like a blast freezer, most passive cooling freezers aren’t going to get it that cold in the timespan you’re talking about, especially if you’re opening up the door multiple times to shake it up and mix it
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