Is there a source with an average range of viscosity (centipose/centistokes) of crude, micelle stream and distillate at various temperatures? Edit: Just looking for a starting off point. I understand temperature and other factors can have a huge impact.
This would be helpful to the community in order to determine proper valve styles, sensors and flow meters.
Are you kidding?
Not that there aren’t folks playing this game with that level of sophistication, but there are still companies that sell “viscosity enhancer” to “thin” your distillate.
There are classes of valves that are lower cost than ball valves and lend themselves to automation better. But they require the viscosity to be known in order to spec them out correctly.
Viscosity will depend on temperature. Also it’s easy to rig up a cheapo viscometer with a ball bearing, stopwatch and a glass tube (could use a grad cylinder)
You’re going to have to determine those empirically.
Averages don’t mean shit, like @broken_glassware
said temperature will have substantial influence on viscosity
No plug and play here automation guy lmao (sorry couldn’t resist)
Haha, I don’t blame you 
I understand it is dependent on temperature and other things. Was just looking for a starting off point like the chart below. Solenoid valves could work on the micelle stream (in theory) as it is generally low viscosity and coaxial/angle seat valves for the thicker strteams may be better. Direct acting valves are pretty low cost as compared to air powered ball valves.
Feel stupid here. @cyclopath pointed out it is Centipoise not Cenitpose. Below are two better links on the forum that have this topic covered better.
only because my search query failed to find this thread…
I beg to differ.
there is a mildly amusing exploration of viscosity on the Asahi LLE thread, but not much in the way of hard data.
if the topic is “how viscous is it?”, so we can control the flow of our favorite cannabinoid based jar sealant at various stages of production, automagically and cost effectively, then right here seems to be the place to drop it.
…so everybody get a ball bearing and a graduated cylinder full of that sticky sticky you’ve got lying around, and lets crowd source this solved 
if the object of the game is to make fun of Pour Slow Timmy… that second link might yield.
Hi @AutomationGuy ,
I’ve recently been working with a RheoSense m-VROC ( m-VROC® II Viscometer — Controlled Shear Rates and Small Samples ) and have gotten mPa-s values (equiv to cP) for all our our extracts and distillates. If you have the means, I recommend this instrument because of its temperature sweep capabilities to get viscosity measurements across any temperature you think you’ll be operating at.
While I wish I could share more, I will say it has helped tremendously with engineering our pathways.
I’ll send samples to the first one to get a decent viscometer!!
@AutomationGuy you remind me of myself before I got into cannabis. I’m very excited with how much you’re engaging the community with these process engineering fundamentals.
Here are some inexpensive ($150 each) viscometers. Which ranges would you all recommend I send to you @cyclopath?
Hopefully the education this great group provides will enable me to bring my skills to bear in a worthwhile manner. I really think there are ways to keep the smaller operations in the game and compete with the big guys. I do not like that there are so many choices on equipment that if you get wrong you may find yourself upside down as the market shifts. I hope to solve this, but as they say one must “diagnose before prescribing”.
Only works with Newtonian fluids as nonnewtonian fluids thin with shear.
Are we working with a non-Newtonian fluid?
Can we figure that out by comparing readings from the simple vs expensive methods of testing?
I’m sorry what I said is not totally true. If you ignore hydrostatic pressure then the shear rate through a cone is close to constant so long as temperature is held constant. It’s not a great test but I just want to correct myself. My apologies.
So ditch the graduated cylinder and use a funnel with a bung in it…sounds like some data could be crowd sourced.
Viscosity is heavily temp dependent like log changes with temp so temp stability is fairly important when you’re doing it. Classic and accurate viscosity measurements are normally done in an oil bath through a specifically sized ca nnon ubbelohde tube
It’d be good data.
I’ve never measured viscosity of cannabis oil so who knows. It’d be worth asking Pope.
Cool toy for automatically measuring centipoise