I’m looking for a parts list to buy and a PID (Process and Instrumentation Diagram) if possible. I have seen a few setups but have some questions.
Size and source of the reactors
There are numerous ports on the vessels, what do I attach and where? Are we using air to agitate the ethanol/weed?
Size and specs on the pumps
I assume that we pump ethanol into the vessel and that we drop in bags of weed. Then we use air to agitate the mixture for several minutes. I also assume that we are chilling the vessels either by pumping cold glycol into the jacket or using a refrigerant (like an industrial refrigeration system in lieu of a packaged system). Can someone spec the chiller system? After the tank is drained, then I guess we grab the weed bags and use a washing machine on the spin cycle to reclaim as much of the crude as possible (can someone spec the washing machine)?
Then we pump the cold ethanol/weed slurry into a holding tank and then through a filter media then we reclaim the ethanol in rotavaps. So I need to know what filter system that are recommended
that depends on how much cannabis you want to extract.
you can look to the brewery industry for jacketed tanks in a variety of sizes.
they are less expensive than the reactors you linked to. and come in larger sizes.
Make sure you ask about jacket pressures and vessel pressure/vac limits. I had to reconfigure my system when I learned at ship time that the 100gal jacketed receiver I had spec’d wasn’t up to the pressure generated by my chiller.
yes, an air powered agitator is the correct solution. the beverage distillation industry can help you out here.
can’t tell you which ports do what till you’ve got it in your hands. more ports is usually a good thing.
air powered.
bags aren’t necessary, and at some scales are going to get in your way (see press link below).
domestic washer will probably not fly evan for final solvent removal in a regulated shop. or at least I wouldn’t try and get it by the firemarshal. adding it in after inspection might work…
Are you looking for THCA? If not Rotovaps are not the least expensive route.
Get/build yourself an appropriately sized still.
if you get two identical reactors you can use one to soak your cannabis, and the other to distil it. If you get three, you can chill your solvent in it. so pay $2k, not $10k.
We are currently doing about 40 liters a month with a 2" pope, 2L short path and 2 20L rotos. We are in California and Colorado but building out our second facility in California.
if you’re asking to size an extraction system, I can’t help without additional data.
How much crude are you going through?
What grade (potency) of input are you hoping to extract?
How are you currently producing your crude?
What sort of losses are you seeing from crude to finished product?
which means recovering about 1000-1500gal of Ethanol a week unless you run the same solvent over multiple batches of cannabis. In which case I again need the potency of the input material, because the number of passes you can do varies with potency of input.
Assuming whole plant at about 10%, you can probably reuse your solvent 4 or even 5 times. so you can get away with 25gal a day at your lower limit, and might want to look at 100gal a day to give you room for expansion.
You could get a CUP 15, and process 8lbs every 30 min, and recover over-night in a large (100gal) still. or FFE if you’ve got the capital.
or you could process 75lbs at a time using a 100gal reactor, and use a press to get your solvent off the cannabis. recovery looks similar.
Are you sure on that price? pretty sure $90k gets you more than a CUP15.
I could have sworn when I was in their shop back in October, the CUP15 was $35k, and the CUP30 looked to be $55k. unless I’m hallucinating again…
Edit: maybe the 15 was $55k and the 30 was $90k?!?
Mine should be here next week. Haven’t seen the invoice. I requested the CUP 30 and was turned down…but I probably paired it with the Spray-Vap or Pinnacle’s FFE so it was a very expensive combo.
Asked for funds to build a cannabis disorienter from scratch 3 or 4 years ago. Wish it had occurred to me to use a standard washing-machine for just recovering the last 5-10% of solvent. I wasn’t happy with the wetted surfaces/bearing/non-enclosed motor when looking at them as extractors. Doh! I wouldn’t try flying one now, but maybe that’s just me.
