EtOH Pro or no?

Looking for thoughts and criticisms on the EtOH-Pro. Worth purchasing? Or bite the bullet and get a 2l rotovap? Looking to process hemp for tinctures, topicals ect.

pronounced

Ä“-toe pro

:shudder:

so long as you’re not actually a pro, sure.
but $2k seems a lot for home use.

as someone doing this for a living?

you can get the right tools for the same $2k
for less than $1k if you spend some time.
https://www.ebay.com/i/183930862766

Edit: 8/2020 ~year old eBay link. Not gonna get much joy from it at this point

4 Likes

No, not for personal. Looking to start a small business and build from there. I pretty much figured it wasn’t all that legit and was already leaning towards a rotovap. I appreciate the input.

absolutely not the right solution for production. (imo)

if someone gave you one, I wouldn’t give you too much grief for running it a couple of times, but you need a real set of tools that you can continue to use as you scale.

I just got a 50l rotovap in the door. does that mean the 2l bucci has reached retirement? Hell no! It’s graduated from “production” to “R&D”…

The 50l came in the door with an actual chiller (well almost :wink: ), but for reasons that are unclear, it was packaged with an EM30!

Not the right pump for a rotovap, but should work with up to a 12l short path, so no way am I kicking it out of bed.

13 Likes

Best thing I’ve read all month.

7 Likes

Decided on the rotovap, now to brush up on using one. How much biomass were you able to process in a day with the 2l? Damn a 50l! Couldn’t imagine running that beast.

in this particular op, the rotovap has never been my bottle neck… but solvent recovery is still.

I’ve been getting about 50lb of biomass into ~15 gal of solvent, and recovering most of that in a turbo 500 still. which mean three 4hr runs. one on a timer. usually starting before I get in. when the still shuts down, at about 5% solvent, its time for the 2L which can just about handle the resin from 20lb of 12% biomass. I usually feed it closer to 17lb. crude is about 80% cannabinoids (~75%CBD).

The 50 rotovap should actually go faster than my current 15 gal still (less than $100 in parts), but the still’s 4hr heat up & 12hr run time work really well as “over-night”, so they should complement each other. the 40 gal still (I’ll probably start at 30gal) should be on line in a week or two. at which point I should be able to process 200lb a day, possibly twice that, once I get a chiller for the 40gal still, and up it’s production to ~10gal/hr with a vacuum assist.

5 Likes

Awesome! So processing crude from 5lbs of hemp should be no problem for it. I’ve not done too many ethanol extractions. Up until this point I’ve mostly run a hydrocarbon cls. Man the throughput on the 50l is insane.

May be a silly question, but how does a chiller speed up a still? For re condensing ethanol?

Take that Edward’s and run! Who packages an E30 w a roto??

3 Likes

Recovery requires evap & condense. A chiller helps with condensing. Vacuum lowers the evap & condense temps. So in order to use vacuum, one generally needs a chiller. With a lower evap temp (and same boiler temp), there is a greater delta-T across the evap heat exchanger, so it works better. So long as you can keep up on the condensing side (have enough chiller), then things go faster…

1 Like

Ahh… I figured it was something like that. Didn’t really think that one thru. Damn really loving this forum so far, tons of useful information.

2 Likes

I’m interested to see your setup once complete. I cobbled together a frankenstill out of shit that I already had just to see what kind of output I can get. Hope to get her dialed in this week.

17 Likes

:heart_eyes:

Who says you can’t distill ethanol with a CLS!!

OSS?

Two shotguns and vac assist? Or are those just jacketed/dewaxing columns?!?

2” shotgun main condenser and a 3” dephlag at the vac port in hopes of keeping etoh out of the pump. It appears to be working. Closed loop pot is sitting on a large mag stirrer. Im waiting on a new stir bar, the one that I have doesn’t like the bottom of the closed loop pot. I also cut the downtube from the underside of the cls lid and smoothed it out.

5 Likes

I have an etho pro I will sell for 500, barely used. I will also have a 2L roto and water asp in 3-4 weeks also barely used. Dm if interested .

3 Likes

fiero gt, hell yeah i love pontiacs lol

Lol, foxbody mustang.

1 Like

I’d be interested to see what rotovap you’ll have for sale!

VERY interested in the Etoh Pro. Created an account so I could DM you.