I think they are lowballing the recovery numbers to be honest and not set unrealistic expectations
The math on a 6” ffe with proper heat is multitudes faster than 2lbs a minute
At 5-1 solvent to biomass that gives you 200lbs of solvent an hour based on production capabilities. Don’t know the exact solvent to material ratio. I’d say that’s a 100lb tank
Minimum and the columns hold 20lbs
Automation will be the killer of most systems
What’s the time frame on that do you think?
Its already here. Luna technologies offers a fully automated extraction system. I can’t recommend it enough, its allowed us to absolutely crush it in the already well established market of Oregon.
I’m saying before you start seeing it as a major staple in the industry.
What’s your throughput. What’s your cost per dry lb to extract.
We do 120-160lbs in about 10 hours of cured trim. Costs per gram to produce bulk dabables is under $1.
But that cost is varied by material input/yield/cost what are your operating cost on one dry lb of material going into the machine.
I’m not trying to be a dick. I know the cost of my two systems “which are labor intensive to run”per dry lb and am curious what a fully automated system cost are to compare might be the move if I can justify the cost and the ROI is good
Of course it varies, my overall average is less than a $1 per gram, sometimes its less than $0.50 a gram to produce. This is cannabis there are a million variables that change the outcome and your costs.
The answer you want also varies a lot by how much we load at a time and how much of the same material we are running. My quick calculations put that number in the range of $10-25 a lb costs but labor costs on that is lower because my calculator accounts for labor to finished bulk extracts, carts and all other lab processes and not per run costs only.
you should be able to take my cost per gram and use my rough average of 14% yields to come to a number per lb but my calculator isnt designed for that specific cost analysis.
Whats your cost per lb to run with a manual system? whats the daily throughput you are at?
Does that use a similar column loading system as the @DeutscheProcess revolver style, or something different?
Im running an automated system I designed and same. under a $1 and have zero employee issues
I guess i should have been more clear, the system runs fully automated but you still need to swap material bags every 1-1.5 hours and do pours. Bag swaps are about a minute long process and pours are a couple minutes depending on the volume you are pouring out.
Automation isn’t going to drastically improve throughput unless you’re running your manual operations poorly. A system is only as fast as it can turn over solvent, which is more dependent on the ancillary equipment. With more energy to heat and chill, you can add more columns, increasing your throughput.
Automation is to most valuable in terms of labor, consistency in operations and end-product, safety, and efficiency. You can retrofit automation onto any system to make it easier to run, but it won’t magically double recovery and chilling rates. That’s why i think automation upgrades on existing systems are the way to go. A lot of people are happy with how their BZBs, IEs, etc perform. Why not just upgrade it for less than 6 figures instead of paying for a 400k+ system with lower throughput.
Right now we are at 315-345 lbs of material per day at a cost of $28-31 per lb operational cost
On point as usual, one thing to about though is maintaining a field verified EPR.
If the original manufacture of the equipment does not amend the EPR for automation changes, modifying a machine in a legal facility will not work…
I’m sure that can be priced into the the product.
Install/retrofit and EPR
A modular automation skid can be separately certified from the system it’s controlling. If the they are both certified, the documentation can be easily amended to combine the two because the bulk of the documentation is done. It would still have to be inspected after install, but so would a new system.
If you’re only using valves, pressure transducers, scales, and thermocouples, then the interconnecting of the 2 systems would take a day since most of those can be mounted on the distribution manifolds.
All of this can probably be done for around 20-25k.
The key to any kind of automation is the sensors
How does your automation know how much solvent has been pulled over biomass
How does it know when all the solvent is out of the material column or the crc
Can it see saturation or pigment?
How does it know when enough has been recovered to do a pourout
Does it know propane to butane ratios and can it adjust it to stay consistent?
Can it handle CIP
Just google the definition of MRX
Decimal is MRX. Decided to rebrand for obvious reasons