100%
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my current recommendation would be the NSEP 755 for $40K-ish.
it will handle approx 100lb dry biomass at a time. it’s 30" baskets are removable. it’s rated (explosion proof). has a 20 year service life in the hands of the US Army. it is easily modified to allow sprayed solvent extraction. and at 1200g, it should come pretty close to the Panda for solvent removal.
Edit: there is however no built-in agitation phase with these things. it shouldn’t be a difficult mod. but it would be a mod.
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i think this happens to be the thread for me right now. I’m looking to run about 100-200lbs a cycle with full plant ~10% yeilding.
I’m hoping to take care of both the initial extraction, secondary recovery from biomass and FFE recovery phases within ~70k-80k
Am i crazy?
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yep. unless you’re building the FFE yourself. least based on my math.
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well then, i hope this is one of those situations when being called crazy is a good thing
diy is the plan thus far
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I’ve certainly decided to embrace it…
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6-10%
That ia going to be difficult. You could pull off the extraction setup for $10k (based on my own findings using jacketed fermenting tanks and a chiller). The centrifuge is $40k though and FFE are all over $100k. Even building yourself may be more exoensive than that.
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yeah after a bit of research, the help of these forums and cyclopath, I have decided to move my interest to a good ole still.
I am still currently shopping around, but between the still, a centrifuge, and some large conical jacketed tanks like mentioned, I do think ill be able to keep it around 75k-80k.
I’m looking to start pulling triggers as early as next week, I will assuredly report back with my purchases and pricetags.
any suggestions on the still are very much appreciated.
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truth
I leveraged IG marketing capital and materials cost for a FFE, one the company now sells for 100k. Gonna have to get real crafty to meet that budget, but it’s possible.
An ethanol still is incredibly simple. Big jacketed reactor, over head stirring, a distillation head (stainless spool), and a large condenser (shell and tube is nice) to a collection reactor. Ideally under vacuum, but we moonshine crude for a very long time no problem.
This is especially efficient if you use it to recover 70-80% of the etoh, then throw the remainder into the roto.
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Thanks brother,
although I do see it being 100% possible within the budget, i cant see a way that i can make the time or resource available to take on the feat within our projected execution date.
More and more i continue to study the solution of a still. may not be ideal when stacked next to a FFE, but i think that may be my only option considering the current time and capital constraints.
I’ll continue to post on my progress as it begins to materialize
Seems like a lot of us are in the same boat lol. I’ve been trying to do the same thing. I was thinking get a 100 gallon container for the storage tank and just throw it in a large deep freezer. Same thing with the material, it will get put in a separate freezer in a large container. Then with an air driven diaphragm pump, the ethanol will be pumped from freezer to freezer. Freezers are a lot cheaper than reactors and you could still put a container capable of holding vac in the freezer. For ultimate cooling power dry ice can be added. Only drawback would be that you can’t heat reactor to get residual ethanol out
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On process tanks I consider that the hold up volume. I leave any residual etoh for the next run.
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What temps are you hoping to achieve with your Extraction?
Also, as posted earlier, having a way to efficiently recover all of that ethanol is going to be your biggest issue.
Regarding buying used process reactors, just be careful because some are good and some are bad. Could be buying a big ole paper weight.
Most vessels are not built for cold. Shrinkage rates and other variables are taken into consideration when building for a specific process.
Be care out there 
What’s the heat source on moonshine still, just bought 8 gal still ran a electric burner,but heat cycle is to inefficient. Was thinking of drum with water bath and propane burner underneath?
a propane burner or even direct electric heat both qualify as bad ideas™ when rectifying 190proof imo
at the very least you want baine marie style electric heat, ideally you want the hot water to be generated at a distance and circulated.
Your drum of water with electric heating elements in the drum would be a start.
how many watts were you throwing at the problem? how long did it take? Where would you like to be instead?
Wanna buy a clue? I haz them for sale cheap 
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It’s a 1300w we had lying around.
Hoping to processing 100s of pounds of hemp here in vermont in the fall. Number of grow license has doubled this year. Right now we are just small scale producing enough to make our cbd products and prove we have a handle on everything before we go looking for $ to scale.
Tell me more about this clue? Learning alot of this as yall lay it down. Thank you by the way.
Also 8gallon still and bottom is concave so it’s not in direct contact
yep, you need it in a barrel of water.
the &^%&^%*& thing will then try and float on you as it does it’s job. ideally you’ll want to make sure it can’t. or at least limit it’s range of motion.
you’ll want about 1kw for each gal of solvent you want back per hr. that’s a slight overkill, but it doesn’t hurt to have extra heat if you might want to double the boiler size before upgrading the heat source. You’re also heating up a big bolus of water, so you want that little extra there too.
a single 5500W water heater element should make your 8gal still more useful. there are off the shelf controllers that can handle 2 of those.
The 100gal still I’m working on getting permitted has ports for 5 of those 5500W elements, but in this application the heat source should be in the next room imo.
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